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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 











































































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3Sp Keb. (0forffe SI. Portion, 3D. 3D. 


THE WITNESS TO IMMORTALITY IN LITER¬ 
ATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND LIFE. i2mo, 
gilt top, $1.50. 

THE CHRIST OF TO-DAY. i2mo, gilt top, 
£1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
Boston and New York. 





THE CHRIST OF TO-DAY 



GEORGE A. GORDON 

MINISTER OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
(Cfte fiilicrside fives s, Cambridge 
1895 









3 T 2.0 \ 

.Gr Ip'S 

19 <\& 


Copyright, 1895, 

By GEORGE A. GORDON. 

All rights reserved. 


The Library 
of Congress 

Washington 


The Riverside Press , Cambridge , Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 








TO THE STUDENTS IN OUR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES, 

TO THOSE ENTERING THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY, 

AND TO THE NEW GENERATION OF CHRISTIAN LAYMEN, 
WHOSE UNSPEAKABLE PRIVILEGE IT WILL BE 
TO RECOVER BOTH FOR THE REASON AND THE HEART 
THE OLD AND ALMIGHTY FAITH IN THE INFINITE CHRIST, 

31 3 T nscrrtie 33oofc, 

IN PROFOUND SYMPATHY WITH THEIR HIGH CALLING, 

IN DEVOUT GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR THEIR CONSECRATION, 
IN AFFECTIONATE RESPECT, 

AND IN GREAT AND CONFIDENT 


EXPECTATION, 
































PREFACE. 


This book had its origin in two lectures deliv¬ 
ered before the Divinity School in Yale Univer¬ 
sity in January, 1895; and in an essay prepared 
for the Unitarian Association of Boston, and 
given before several other clerical bodies in the 
same city. These three essays, however, consti¬ 
tute less than a third of the present discussion, 
and even that third has been entirely transformed 
through revision and extension of plan. The 
substance of the first chapter was read, in July 
last, before the Summer School of Theology at 
Western Reserve University. 

The work has grown out of the reflection of 
the author upon the theological phenomena of 
the time, more accessible to the student in cur¬ 
rent thought than in books. The author is glad 
to acknowledge the great impulse in the direc¬ 
tion of his studies derived from Principal Fair- 
bairn’s treatise, “The Place of Christ in Modern 



VI 


PREFACE. 


Theology.” That mine of learning, masterly 
historical generalization, and rich suggestion has 
given new strength to the Christian consciousness 
throughout the English-speaking world; and the 
longer it is read the more generative of ideas it 
will he found to be. 

Nevertheless, there are questions perplexing 
the faith of our churches that Dr. Fairbairn’s 
great work does not meet, — questions of which 
only one living in open communion in the heart 
of our American Christianity can fully know. 
Every nation must work out its own theology. 
Great Britain and Germany, Reformation and 
Patristic times, can but supply impulse and guid¬ 
ance. Importations without naturalization are 
alike fatal in thought as in life, and naturaliza¬ 
tion, to be thorough, must equal re-creation. A 
borrowed theology must signify that, in the high¬ 
est sphere of human thought, the national mind 
is either incapable or indifferent; and neither of 
these terms describes the condition of the Ameri¬ 
can mind to-day. The advice of Maurice at 
this point is full of meaning: “New-Englanders 
who try to substitute Berkeley or Butler, . . . 
or Kant or Hegel, for Edwards, and to form 
their minds upon any of them, must be forcing 


PREFACE. 


vn 


themselves into an unnatural position, and must 
suffer from the effort. On the contrary, if they 
accept the starting-point of their native teacher, 
and seriously consider what is necessary to make 
that teacher consistent with himself, — what is 
necessary that the divine foundation upon which 
he wished to build may not be too weak and nar¬ 
row for any human or social life to rest upon it, 
— we should expect great and fruitful results 
from their inquiries to the land which they must 
care for most, and therefore to mankind.” The 
one foundation upon which Edwards wished to 
build was the absoluteness of God; and he has 
left for his followers the principle which, if 
resolutely employed, will insure both continuity 
and progress in the thought and life of Ameri¬ 
can Christianity. The second chapter of the 
discussion contained in this volume is a fresh 
attempt to reach the absoluteness of God through 
the finality for mankind of the mind of Christ; 
the third chapter employs the mind of Christ as 
the creative and conservative principle in the¬ 
ology, and in other intellectual movements of 
the time; the fourth chapter sees in Christ the 
supreme instrument of the Spirit in the moral 
education of the race. A Christological interpre- 


PREFACE. 


viii 

tation becomes a theological principle, and these 
issue in the great method of the preacher. How¬ 
ever insignificant, the present discussion is a true 
continuation of the theological tradition which 
dates from our greatest theologian, Jonathan 
Edwards. His errors, his weaknesses, his great 
inconsistencies, and what Prof. A. V. G. Allen 
calls “his Inferno,” have had altogether too long 
a history in New England thought. It is time 
that his original principle — the absoluteness of 
God — were allowed logical and unreserved ex¬ 
pression in the faith of our churches. For fur¬ 
ther explanation of the occasion and motive of 
this book the author must refer the reader to the 
introductory chapter. 

George A. Gordon. 


Old South Paksonage, Boston. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Page 

I. The new world into which the church has 

COME. 3 


II. 

The expansion of this world in space 

• 

• 

6 

III. 

Its extension in time .... 

• 

• 

11 

IV. 

The world of contemporaneous humanity 

• 

19 

v. 

The kingdom of the spirit, and the 

KINGDOM 



OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST 

• 

• 

22 

VI. 

The problem before the Christian 

THINKER 



TO-DAY ....... 

• 

• 

28 

VII. 

The theologian of the future . 

. 

• 

31 

VIII. 

The motive of the discussion that follows 


34 


CHAPTER II. 

CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

I. Views of Christ from without and within 46 

II. The ethical Christ. 53 

III. The gains manward and godward in current 

THOUGHT OF CHRIST.66 

IV. The interpretation of the final meaning of 

NATURE THROUGH CHRIST. 81 

V. The DEFECT IN CURRENT THOUGHT OF CHRIST AN 

OVERDONE PRINCIPLE OF IDENTITY . . .93 

VI. The principle of difference in the godhead 101 




X 


CONTENTS. 


VII. The deity of christ the expression of this 

DIFFERENCE IN HUMANITY. 112 

VIII. The meaning of this difference, the moral 

PERFECTION OF CHRIST. 122 

CHAPTER III. 

THE SIGNIFICANCE TO-DAY OF A SUPREME 
CHRISTOLOGY. 

I. In relation to the higher criticism . . 149 

II. In reference to new theological theory . 166 

III. In its bearing upon the social problem . . 206 

IV. As a force against materialism . . . 226 

V. The fortune of humanity bound up with the 

DEITY OF CHRIST. 234 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE PLACE OF CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

I. The value of the prophetic office in the 

light of Christ’s career. 256 

II. The relation of the preacher’s message to 

THE MULTITUDES UNDER MORAL DEFEAT . . 275 

III. Christ and Christianity inseparable . . 283 

IV. Christ the source of our civilization . . 287 

V. The psychological aspect of the question . 295 

VI. Christ the supreme person in time, and there¬ 
fore THE MEDIATOR OF THE SUPREME PERSON 


BEYOND TIME 


. 304 


CHAPTER I 


INTRODUCTORY. 


“ And the house, when it was in building-, was built of stone 
made ready at the quarry : and there was neither hammer nor 
axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in build¬ 
ing.” — 1 Kings vi. 7. 

“ About every great Christian truth there is a debatable 
ground. A definition is to be given ; the bond of connection be¬ 
tween the truth supposed and other related Christian truths is to 
he sought; a place is to he found for it in the general sum of our 
knowledge. All this work of accurate conception and explana¬ 
tion constitutes an open field for differences to arise among those 
who concur in the main thing. Two maps of the same country 
will seldom, if ever, exactly agree.” — Dr. George P. Fisher, 
Faith and nationalism , p. 42. 

‘ ‘ If we looked on the conceptions formed by us of God as 
fully coincident with reality, if we imputed to Him the infirmi¬ 
ties inseparable from a finite mind, and regarded our operations 
of thought as an exact representation of his, we might he 
charged with an offensive anthropomorphism. But this charge 
does not hold against the assumption that He is a Spirit.” — 
Dr. George P. Fisher, Faith and nationalism , p. 103. 

“Pity is love and something more: love at its utmost.” — 
T. T. Hunger, The Freedom of Faith, p. 182. 


THE CHRIST OF TO-DAY. 


CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

I. 

Revolutions in human affairs are of two 
kinds, the gradual and unconscious, and the sud¬ 
den and violent. In our own history we have 
had two examples of the latter, the Civil War and 
that which resulted in the independence of the 
United States. French history furnishes many 
examples of this type of revolution; the Protes¬ 
tant Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, and 
the Netherlands, and the ultimate disaster to the 
Roman Empire must be put in the same class. 
So, too, must one think of the destruction of 
Jerusalem by Titus, and of many of the great 
crises through which Israel passed, back to the 
Exodus. On the other hand, instances of grad¬ 
ual and peaceful changes of a fundamental na¬ 
ture are likewise numerous. The Reformation in 
England, the revolution that followed the revival 
of learning in mediaeval Europe, the transforma- 



4 


INTRODUCTORY. 


tions wrought by the invention of printing, the 
discoveries of navigators, and the steady progress 
of science have been largely of this character. 
And in the history of Israel, so full of violent 
changes, there are not wanting illustrations of 
movements of a contrasted order. Before the 
temple of Solomon was built, a new and mighty 
turn had come in the fortunes of the people over 
whom he reigned. The wilderness wanderings 
were far behind. The nomadic days of the early 
settlement of the new country were long ago out¬ 
grown. The time of the city had arrived, with 
its notes of fellowship, order, and stability; with 
its concentration of population, interests, influ¬ 
ence, and power. The outward sign of this na¬ 
tional change was the building of the temple. 
It was a large undertaking, it marked a revolu¬ 
tion in the life of the people, it was costly in the 
extreme; and yet so ripe were the times for the 
magnificent enterprise, that it went forward to its 
completion as if by magic. The sacrifice, the 
labor, the skill, the new ideas and adjustments 
necessary for it, all came with the ease of perfect 
spontaneity. Out of the consciousness of the 
splendid king at his best, representing as he did 
the consciousness of the people, came the great 
building for God, which marked an epoch in 
Israel’s history, and recorded a silent but mighty 
revolution in the thought and feeling of the na¬ 
tion. This is the profounder meaning of the 


THE NEW WORLD OF FAITH. 


5 


beautiful description: “And the house, when it 
was in building, was built of stone made ready 
at the quarry: and there was neither hammer 
nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, 
while it was in building.” The times were ripe, 
and the nation moved out of the old narrow, out¬ 
grown world, and into the new world of breadth 
and hope, with the magnificent unconsciousness of 
healthy expanding life. 

Through this ancient parallel one may see what 
has already taken place in the Christian church. 
A revolution has already been accomplished — 
for the most part peacefully, beautifully — in the 
fundamental thoughts of intelligent believers; the 
church has already moved, almost unconsciously, 
but still truly, out of the old narrow world into 
the new and vast world of our modern intelli¬ 
gence. All reflective disciples of Christ have 
been moving into a new realm of thought and 
feeling, and, like men on an ocean voyage, they 
hardly know how far they have come. The same 
sun and moon and stars and sea seem to make 
the fact of progress insignificant; but the day 
arrives when a new territory is sighted, and the 
reality of advance can no longer be doubted. 
The abiding facts in Christian faith, the perma¬ 
nent forces in Christian experience, the everlast¬ 
ing lights in the firmament of Christian truth, 
and the changeless element of feeling in which 
all genuine disciples of the Master live and move, 


6 


INTRODUCTORY. 


tend not infrequently to obscure the reality of 
movement from less to more. But there come 
hours of inevitable comparison, when the work of 
time for the Christian consciousness stands out 
in unmistakable greatness, when new thoughts, 
wider purposes, vaster enterprises, make the fact 
of emergence into a new world no longer deniable. 
And it needs repeated emphasis that the move¬ 
ment in our time out into the larger thought 
has taken place in an astonishingly spontaneous 
way. Little violence has been experienced any¬ 
where. The first temple went up without the 
sound of hammers, and the new and magnificent 
edifice of Christian faith is rising as by a self- 
creative process. 


II. 

The first great expansion of the human mind 
in modern times began with the Copernican as¬ 
tronomy. The universe of the ancient thinker 
was insignificant, almost petty, compared with 
that of the intelligent man of to-day. The first 
impression that one gets upon entering that su¬ 
perseded universe is its narrowness, its want of 
range and room. One is surprised at its meagre¬ 
ness, as one might fancy a millionaire from Fifth 
Avenue, New York, to be over the insignificant, 
dingy quarters of certain mediaeval kings. Our 
planet was the centre in the old astronomy, the 
biggest of all the heavenly bodies, the most im- 


NARROWNESS OF THE OLD WORLD. 7 


portant from all points of view, and the whole 
stellar world had its final cause of being in min¬ 
istering to the welfare of the earth. The unpar¬ 
alleled creation hymn with which the Book of 
Genesis opens is based upon that old astronomy. 
It could have been based upon no other, for 
there was then no other. And the fact that it 
rests upon superseded science no more discredits 
its imperishable moral and spiritual worth than the 
immense mass of outgrown opinion in Dante’s 
great poem discredits the enduring splendor of 
that production, and its permanent value for 
mankind. Still, the fact is obvious that the ma¬ 
terial universe of the sublime singer in Genesis 
was exceedingly limited: “And God said, Let 
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to 
divide the day from the night; and let them be 
for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 
and let them be for lights in the firmament of the 
heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was 
so. And God made the two great lights: the 
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light 
to rule the night: he made also the stars. And 
God set them in the firmament of the heaven to 
give light upon the earth, and to rule over the 
day and over the night, and to divide the light 
from the darkness .” 1 Here the conception is 
that the whole stellar world has its existence 
simply as an attendant upon this globe. Under 
i Gen. i. 14-18. 


8 


INTRODUCTORY. 


similar conceptions the race lived until far down 
into modern times. The sense of vastness was 
largely absent from their universe as extended in 
space; it was small, and necessarily so. It is 
matter of common history that the shock expe¬ 
rienced by faith, upon the publication of the 
Copernican astronomy, was very great. A wise 
Catholic scholar tried to allay the anxiety con¬ 
cerning the inspiration of the Bible, as it stood in 
contradiction to the new science, with the remark 
that the Bible was given, not to teach how the 
heavens go, but how to go to heaven. It has 
been of the utmost comfort to Christian thinkers 
to remember how swiftly, and on the whole how 
quietly, the faith of the church adjusted itself 
to the stupendous revolution in man’s thought 
of the material universe inaugurated by the Co¬ 
pernican astronomy. The new astronomy has 
given grandeur to the idea of creation, — has in¬ 
directly attested the dignity of man, as being the 
creation that he has discovered, the orders and 
worlds that he has explored. And even when 
man comes to the limit of thought, having swept 
within the field of vision empire upon empire, 
system upon system, and universe upon uni¬ 
verse, and stands upon the widest circumference 
of science and looks beyond into the infinite, the 
infinite is still his conception, the boundless 
spaces are yet in a way subject to him. The 
modern astronomy, in giving such immeasurable 


THE EXPANSION OF THE NEW. 9 

expansion to the outward world, has resulted 
indirectly in a new consciousness of the dignity 
of man. For the greater the universe becomes, 
the more illustriously does it display the marvel¬ 
ousness of the human intellect. The universe is 
man’s universe; and the bigger it is, the more 
honor does it reflect upon him. Infinitely more 
faith than unbelief has come from the Copernican 
conception. In discovering how petty this earth 
is in the total limitless reach of the stellar uni¬ 
verse, man has rediscovered himself as superior to 
all environments, as of more worth than the birds 
of heaven and the heavens themselves. The indi¬ 
rect result of the new astronomy in building the 
consciousness of man into the sense of dignity 
needs to have fresh emphasis laid upon it to-day. 

But the deepest reason for this reference to the 
greater world in space in which men are now 
living is that the sense of vastness in their sur¬ 
roundings has elicited a corresponding mental 
trait. For the intelligent modern man, living in 
the sense of a measureless universe, triviality of 
conception has wellnigh become an impossibility. 
Among the greatest educators of our time, a fore¬ 
most place must be given to the consciousness of 
living under an infinite outward order. It has 
put the imagination under a fresh and diviner 
spell. It has given new volume and form to the 
feeling of awe in the presence of the sublime. It 
has translated the sweet illusion of vision into a 


10 


INTRODUCTORY. 


boundless universe of amazing orders and splen¬ 
dors, and made men aware that the symbolism of 
sight, with reference to the contents of space, is 
but the merest hint of the infinite and overwhelm¬ 
ing reality. It has taxed the mind with a new ob¬ 
ject, and imparted to it an amplitude that has told 
for much. This large-mindedness has affected 
the interpretation of man’s relations to God, and 
the significance of the career of Christ. It has 
not driven thinkers back to the daring conception 
of Origen, of an infinite stairway of worlds up 
which the hosts of mankind are made to march, 
as the sublime discipline through which sin is to 
be overcome and annihilated, and the final con¬ 
summation of which is that God may be all in 
all. There has been no such venturesomeness as 
the result of the sense of the exceeding greatness 
of the universe in which we live. But there is 
evident, I think, as the direct outcome of life 
under the shadow of an immeasurable material 
order, a new and large way of treating our whole 
human problem, and the parallel mission of 
Christ. An immense library of theological liter¬ 
ature has thus been quietly outgrown. Its logic 
has not been considered and refuted; its narrow 
premises have been entirely transcended. Vener¬ 
ation for human aspiration and heroism, and for 
the essential that always appears in all genuine 
forms of faith, however crude these forms may 
be, still makes it pleasant and even profitable to 


TRADITIONAL OPINION OUTGROWN. 11 


explore the worlds of the schoolmen, the reform¬ 
ers, and the puritans; but the most sympathetic 
student must feel that these former things have 
passed away. Without the denial of any one of 
their greater beliefs, this feeling is fixed. The 
thing that makes them obsolete is the pettiness 
of their world, the narrowness of their outlook, 
the want of breadth and range of mind. Through 
the discipline of the world in which we live, im¬ 
measurably extended in space as it is, we have 
quietly transcended the habits of thought of a 
former age. It was no disrespect for the past, 
or want of veneration for the intellectual power 
of his predecessors, least of all any deficiency of 
appreciation of the nobleness of philosophy and 
theology as callings, that led Hegel to say, in 
answer to an invitation to give instruction in 
logic and traditional theological opinion, that 
that would be to become “ white washer and chim¬ 
ney-sweep ” at the same time. His conception of 
the human mind, and of God in history, utterly 
transcended, and rendered obsolete for him, the 
traditional German thought in which he was 
bred. Our universe is a vast, an infinite uni¬ 
verse, and our conceptions in the realm of Chris¬ 
tian faith must have this vast and infinite char¬ 
acter. 

III. 

But far more important than the indefinite 
enlargement in space is the enormous extension 


12 


INTRODUCTORY. 


in time that our human world has undergone. 
A new idea of history, almost bewildering in its 
greatness, has taken possession of the mind of 
this century. Instead of a race with a career 
running only for six thousand years, we have a 
humanity with a probable history of a hundred 
thousand years. The birth and growth of the 
very idea of humanity, and the expanse of time 
over which it must be carried and made good, is 
perplexing in the extreme. The burden of the 
world was heavy upon the prophetic heart in the 
ancient age, but it is incalculably heavier to-day. 
It is a picture of great scope and impressiveness 
that Carlyle paints in his French Revolution, his 
Frederick the Great, and his Oliver Cromwell, 
but the picture gives only a hint of the life of 
three modern nations in the two centuries pre¬ 
ceding our own, — the French nation and the 
Prussian in the eighteenth century, and the 
English in the seventeenth; the historic vista 
extends no farther. It is a wonderful pageant 
that Gibbon causes to pass before the eye of the 
student in his Decline and Fall of Rome, but the 
more than a thousand years through which he 
carries his work, measured against historic time, 
are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a 
watch in the night. It is a marvelous drama 
that Grote develops in his great History of 
Greece, and the action and the characters and 
the tragic issues have an abiding and wonderful 


NEW CONCEPTION OF HISTORY. 13 

meaning; still the twelve volumes deal with a 
very small part of the race, and a very brief 
period of time. Rawlinson puts before us a vast 
and dim world in his Five Ancient Monarchies; 
and we feel the spell of great antiquity as we 
read his pages, and are touched with the sense of 
the dark and stormy morning of our humanity. 
But when we have passed from Carlyle to Gib¬ 
bon, from Gibbon to Grote, from Grote to Raw¬ 
linson, we have come only to the beginning of 
the new conception of history. The countless 
silent centuries that lie behind recorded history 
are to-day one of the most touching, fascinating, 
and bewildering objects of thought. They have 
at last risen from their long sleep; they have 
finally found recognition; their labor and sorrow 
in preparing the way for historic man is no longer 
ignored; the tears and the blood by which they 
wrought out the physical forms from which our 
better life has come, and the beginnings of civili¬ 
zation that they were able to hand on to their 
more fortunate successors, are becoming part of 
the sympathetic and grateful recollection of man¬ 
kind. It is indeed strange, this resurrection of 
a dead world, this emancipation from oblivion of 
a forgotten humanity, this return to recognition 
and brotherhood with the later generations of the 
millions that lived in the dust behind the records 
of history, and looked “with dumb eyes to the 
silence of the skies.” It is a speaking symbol 


14 


INTRODUCTORY. 


of the possible reach of human imagination and 
sympathy, of the essential unity of the race, of 
the general sublime memorial of all the serving 
and aspiring ages that shall at last be erected in 
the grateful and venerative memory of mankind. 

Here, then, is the second call for the new habit 
of thought. Here is the second cause of the 
revolution that has already taken place in the 
nobler mind of the church. The problem is our 
problem, and the old mental mood is totally in¬ 
adequate to cope with it. The Hebrew form of 
the problem, the apostolic form of the problem, 
the mediaeval and puritan forms of it, are not large 
enough for that which confronts the believer 
to-day. The Hebrew prophet was for the most 
part satisfied with the salvation of the remnant 
of Israel, while the hostile contemporaneous Gen¬ 
tile world was under doom. The universalism 
of the Old Testament seer concerns the golden 
ages of the future, and has nothing to do with the 
multitudinous populations of the past. The apos¬ 
tle Paul has indeed a magnificent sense of history, 
and a profound philosophy of it, as is abun¬ 
dantly attested by his speech to the Athenians, 
and by passages of the greatest moment in the 
letters to the Galatians and Romans. But the 
ideal of a Christ for humanity, ultimate as a 
form of thought although it is, and capable of 
infinite expansion in answer to the developments 
of time and the facts of the case, could not have 


RESTRICTED SALVATION INCREDIBLE. 15 


meant for him what it must mean for the believer 
to-day. The restricted conception of salvation 
inaugurated under the apparent appalling com¬ 
pulsion of facts by Augustine, cherished through 
the Middle Ages, revitalized by the reformers, 
and descending with the puritan inheritance to the 
present generation, is possible to those only who 
shut their eyes to the vastness of human history. 
The consciousness of history as of unmeasured 
extent, and as embracing countless multitudes of 
the human race, inferior doubtless in every way 
to the men of to-day, but upon whose sacrifices 
and rude civilizations, representing worlds of 
struggle and suffering, the modern age has built, 
and without which even genius itself would be 
comparatively helpless, is one of the great forces 
that are calling for a new conception of salvation. 
It is impossible to believe that the unmeasured 
worlds of prehistoric man that at the present 
time are rolling into the vision of the nobler 
spirits, and whose wonderful contributions in the 
way of brain and muscle and rude inventions, of 
the indispensable preliminaries of civilization, are 
receiving wider and more reverent recognition, 
do not stand in the eternal loving thought of God 
in Christ. The idea that confines salvation to 
the remnant, whether that be the remnant of the 
Hebrew prophet, or that of the mediaeval saint, 
or of the puritan, is to-day incredible. If cher¬ 
ished, it can have but one issue, — atheism. 


16 


INTRODUCTORY. 


The church is on trial. The humanity that 
she must include in her faith and prayer and 
sympathy has multiplied itself like the sand of 
the sea, and crowds the expanded spaces of time 
with hosts that no man can number. The think¬ 
ing world of to-day will insist upon an answer to 
the question whether the Christ of the modern 
preacher has any relation to this recovered and 
piteously needy humanity. A great many, who 
are afraid of breadth, are looking favorably upon 
the scientific solution, the survival of the fittest. 
Among the lower animals, from countless multi¬ 
tudes that cannot succeed, and that are born to 
fail, a few strong specimens are found that pre¬ 
vail over the hard conditions and live on. From 
these come swarms of offspring, the overwhelm¬ 
ing majority of which are under certain doom, 
and from whose doomed multitudes a second 
selection of the strong is made, to carry onward 
the torch of life. Nature, according to this con¬ 
ception, produces more than she wants, more 
than can by any possibility live, in order that 
from this excess of numbers she may have a 
better pick. Her procedure is perfectly frank 
and undisguised. She wants a few fine speci¬ 
mens, with which to carry the race higher, and 
she thinks that she will succeed better if she 
shall have a larger number from which to choose. 
Care for the unfit she has none, regard for the 
perishing is utterly foreign to her heart. She 


SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 17 

multiplies to inconceivable excess the forms of 
life, in order that the chances for selection of the 
fit may be indefinitely improved. The unfit are 
her blunder, the piteous witnesses of her inca¬ 
pacity and heartlessness. This is the way in 
which science disposes of the abortive life in the 
lower animal kingdoms. The question is, whether 
it is safe for the church to look with favor upon 
this scientific method. It may be well enough 
in the non-moral sphere, but what shall be said 
of it when it stands as the self-disclosure of the 
moral head of the universe, and the law accord¬ 
ing to which he deals with mankind? If only 
the morally fit survive, — if the creation of man¬ 
kind is purposely excessive in order that from 
the wider reprobation a larger election may be 
made, — the old theology is indeed safe, but the 
religion of Christ is gone. If the method of 
God with humanity is but another aspect of the 
scientific doctrine of the salvation of the strong, 
if his government is grounded upon a necessary 
reprobation and election, then He who came to 
seek and to save the lost is not his Son. For the 
method of Jesus is in absolute contradiction to that 
procedure, and his Spirit is the eternal arraign¬ 
ment and condemnation of irresponsible Almight- 
iness. Fools should never handle dangerous 
tools, and those who, in the name of conserva¬ 
tism, are courting the scientific doctrine of the 
survival of the fittest, are sadly in need of this 


18 


INTRODUCTORY. 


admonition. The voices which seem so sweet to 
the theologian who is afraid of the breadth of the 
modern time, and who is anxious to conserve 
venerable theological traditions, are the songs of 
sirens, and “near by is a great heap of rotting 
human bones; fragments of skin are shriveled 
on them. Therefore sail on .” 1 On this basis the 
old theology is safe, but the Christian religion 
and the mighty conception of a divine humanity 
are doomed. The new consciousness of history, 
the expansion of our human world in time, is the 
opportunity of the Christian religion, its fresh 
and ampler vindication, and it is the hour of trial 
for the church of to-day. If the present reach 
of the nobler imagination, the rich increase of 
historic sense and sympathy, and the consciousness 
of a human communion that is indefinably and 
mysteriously great, does not result in conceptions 
worthier Christ, more in accord with that which 
in the soul is likest God, the Christian thinkers, 
and all those who are responsible for the forms 
of faith for this generation, will miss an amazing 
chance to serve the kingdom of God. One feels 
that, if out of the profounder and better life of 
the time religious conceptions should arise, they 
would be so close an approximation to the mind 
of Christ as to possess a power almost elemental. 
The truth in its true form is the mightiest thing 
on earth: it does not need eloquence or skill or 
1 Odyssey, book xii., Professor Palmer’s translation. 


THE SENSE OF HUMANITY. 


19 


passion to plead its claims; it makes way for 
itself; rises upon mankind as the unclouded sun 
does upon the earth, and puts the world under 
the sense of its glory and beneficent power. 


IY. 

Another modifying force of the time is the sense 
of a contemporaneous humanity. The world has 
grown much smaller in the last half century: the 
time consumed in a journey to Washington, a 
hundred years ago, would to-day take one almost 
round the globe. The various populations of the 
planet have met and looked one another in the 
face. The different forms of contemporaneous 
civilization are under study and inter-comparison, 
and the prevailing mood among believing scholars 
is that the Christian creed must include the race 
as the subject of the Divine education. To-day 
there is a whole world to be saved, and one’s 
plan of salvation must be adequate to the practi¬ 
cal opportunity. The absoluteness of Christian¬ 
ity is one of the great words of this generation. 
The serious consideration of that word and its 
complete vindication would work a revolution in 
traditional theological opinion. The absoluteness 
of Christianity does not merely mean that it is to 
supersede all other religions. I believe it does 
mean that. But it must also mean the disclosure 
of the relation of the extra-Christian world to 
Christ in the divine plan of its existence. To 


20 


INTRODUCTORY. 


proclaim Christianity as the absolute religion, to 
regard it as superseding and doing away with all 
other forms of faith, and to fail to vindicate its 
everlasting relation to all men because they are 
men, is a one-sided and poor procedure. If 
Christianity is absolute, that absoluteness must 
be shown, in part at least, by the final divine 
interpretation which it puts upon the previous 
imperfect disciplines of the various nations to 
whom it is sent. The scholarship of the Chris¬ 
tian world, the large and sympathetic study of 
the religions of mankind, the feelings bred by 
the honorable international trade of the earth, 
the steady emergence of a cosmopolitan habit of 
mind, and the wonderful growth of the idea of 
humanity, make it impossible longer to live in 
the traditional theology. It is not big enough, 
nor is it good enough as theoretic support and 
inspiration for the best interests and activities of 
the world to-day. The vast missionary enterprise 
of the church must ever demand a larger conse¬ 
cration of wealth, a nobler sacrifice, a wider 
devotion; but the causal fountain of all this is 
the character of faith. There is at present no 
adequate theoretic support and incentive for this 
magnificent enterprise of the church of our time. 
The moment that the traditional theology is uti¬ 
lized in developing enthusiasm for foreign mis¬ 
sions, that moment the conscience of the best 
men turns away from the dismal business; and 


MISSIONS AND THEOLOGY. 21 

(^only as the traditionalist abandons theology and 
betakes himself to Christianity in its New Testa¬ 
ment form, and stakes everything upon the pre¬ 
vailing passion of human love as it is born and 
fired out of the heart of Christ and out of the 
Fatherhood of God, does he make his appeal 
effective and overwhelming) The fact that the 
missionary work of the churches was founded 
upon the old theology is no reason why it should 
be continued upon that basis. It was, indeed, 
founded upon the love of God in Christ for the 
world, and it must be built again upon that fun¬ 
damental truth as it is reflected in the larger 
intelligence of the time^ Faith without works is 
dead, and the best theology that does nothing is 
worse than a poor theology that agonizes to save 
the world. Nevertheless, a living faith is the 
only permanent source of missionary endeavor, 
and the faith that is adequate to the world-enter¬ 
prises now on the hands of the church must 
issue in wider and richer practical results. The 
missionary enterprise has transcended the concep¬ 
tion in which it originated: it has led the church 
that inaugurated it into a new world; it has been 
fruitful of ideas and feelings beyond all expecta¬ 
tion; and to-day it is largely a stupendous pedes¬ 
tal in the air, waiting for the new conception of 
the mission of God in Christ to be put under it 
as adequate and everlasting support. 


22 


INTRODUCTORY. 


V. 

Another aspect of the religious problem of the 
times sums itself up in the question whether the 
Kingdom of the Spirit shall be regarded as an 
expression of the Kingdom of Christ. In other 
words, Is the Kingdom of the Spirit the Kingdom 
of the Spirit of Christ? Has the world of the 
Spirit escaped from the dominion of our Lord? 
If that is true, it means the surrender of his 
supreme divinity, and the abandonment of the 
claim that his religion is the absolute religion. 
The world of the Spirit is a phenomenon to be 
revered. In it there is much immediate agree¬ 
ment; there is a common philosophy for all its 
inhabitants. Humanity is regarded as a spiritual 
totality moving and having its being in the life 
of the Eternal. Its reality is independent of 
space and time; it requires neither the witness 
of history nor the power of argument to attest it; 
it is intuitively, spiritually discerned, the discov¬ 
ery of the higher reason, the vision of the soul 
alive with the divine. Human relations are de¬ 
fined in terms of an austere morality, society is 
construed as an organism subservient to an ulti¬ 
mate ethical purpose, and behind mankind is the 
Infinite with transcendent plans of grace. The 
ethical constitution, the ethical organization of 
life, and its immediate fellowship with the divine, 
is the high thought common to those who endeavor 


THE KINGDOM OF THE SPIRIT. 


23 


to live in tlie Spirit. Fichte is the great apostle 
of this order in our century. The Kingdom of 
the Spirit was with him the ultimate reality, and 
Christianity its provincial, temporary, although 
sublime expression. “There is absolutely no 
Being and no Life beyond the immediate Divine 
Life. So far as we have now proceeded in our 
interpretation of the proem to the Johannean 
Gospel, we have met only with what is absolutely 
and eternally true. At this point begins that 
which possesses validity only for the time of 
Jesus and the establishment of Christianity, and 
for the necessary standpoint of the apostles, — 
the historical, not in any way metaphysical, prop¬ 
osition that this absolute and immediate existence 
of God, the Eternal Knowledge or Word, pure 
and undefiled as it is in itself, without any admix¬ 
ture of impurity or darkness, or any merely indi¬ 
vidual limitation, manifested itself in a personal, 
sensible, human existence,” — in Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth. Fichte distinguishes between the philoso¬ 
phy of the prelude to the Fourth Gospel, which is 
absolutely and eternally true, and the historical 
facts of Christianity and their interpretation by 
its Founder and his apostles, which are true 
“ only from the temporary point of view of Jesus 
and his apostles .” 1 The Kingdom of the Spirit 
and the Kingdom of Jesus are not, in Fichte’s 
thought, identical; the former is the final reality, 
1 The Way towards the Blessed Life, leet. vi. pp. 381, 388. 


24 


INTRODUCTORY. 


the latter simply the greatest of its historic mani¬ 
festations. This mood toward the realm of the 
spiritual and also toward Christianity, Carlyle 
inherited from Fichte. For Carlyle, the gospel 
is a my thus, with a transcendent expression, in 
the character of Jesus, of the moral order of the 
world. The common philosophy is the sover¬ 
eignty of spiritual ideas within the limits of the 
natural order. The sequences of nature are the 
fixed and unalterable forms of the manifestation 
and supremacy of the Spirit; and the “God-in¬ 
spired man,” even at his highest, is but the sym¬ 
bol of the Absolute. History is but the clothes, 
the Idea is the reality. This is the great but 
one-sided thought of Carlyle’s deepest work, 
Sartor Resartus. Emerson continues the same 
tradition. The moral order of the world, the 
Kingdom of the Spirit, is the infinite reality, and 
historical Christianity is the venerable and beau¬ 
tiful but local revelation of that. This is es¬ 
sentially the ground of the idealistic school in 
Germany, of which Pfleiderer is a distinguished 
representative, and of modern Unitarianism, at 
least in its prevailing phase. And at this point 
one of the deepest and most urgent of the ques¬ 
tions of to-day is started, — Is the Kingdom of 
the Spirit the Kingdom of our Lord ? Or has it 
transcended him and his conception? 

For a considerable number of noble men, the 
answer must be given that it has. The Kingdom 


UNHISTORICAL IDEALISM. 


25 


of the Spirit is not the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. 
Christ is in it as superlative servant, but not as 
King. The persons to whom I refer have parted 
company with historic Christianity. They have 
found current orthodox notions utterly inadequate 
to the modern situation, and, having no other 
equally accessible means for judging historic 
Christianity, they have come to similar conclu¬ 
sions in regard to it. The Kingdom of the Spirit 
has in many cases cut itself free from the domin¬ 
ion of Christ, and that defines afresh the duty 
of the hour for the Christian thinker. He must 
show that the conception of Christ underlying 
the rejection is wholly inadequate; that the break 
has come because the Kingdom of the Spirit has 
been conceived in the strength of Christ without 
the acknowledgment of his indispensable aid; 
that the high philosophy originated in the dis¬ 
carded history, and lives mainly because rooted 
in the perennial vitality of the gospel. Fichte’s 
grand characterizations of Jesus are fatal to his 
unhistorical idealism. “An insight into the ab¬ 
solute unity of the human existence with the 
Divine is certainly the profoundest that man can 
attain. Before Jesus, this knowledge had no¬ 
where existed; and since his time, we may almost 
say down even to the present day, it has again 
been as good as rooted out and lost, at least in 
profane cognition. Jesus, however, was evidently 
in possession of this insight; as we shall incon- 


26 


INTRODUCTORY. 


testably find, were it only in the Gospel of John. 
How, then, came Jesus by this insight? . . . How 
the first discoverer, separated from centuries before 
him and centuries after him by the exclusive pos¬ 
session of this insight, did attain to it, — this is 
an exceeding great wonder. And so it is in fact 
true . . . that Jesus of Nazareth is, in a wholly 
peculiar manner, attributable to no one but him, 
the only-begotten and first-born Son of God; and 
that all ages, which are capable of understanding 
him at all, must recognize him in this character .” 1 
Idealism within the terms of naturalism cannot 
digest views so exalted of the historic Jesus. 
But Fichte contends “that all those who since 
Jesus have come into union with God have come 
into union with God through him. And thus it 
is confirmed in every way that, even to the end 
of time, all wise and intelligent men must bow 
themselves reverently before this Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth; and that the more wise, intelligent, and 
noble they themselves are, the more humbly will 
they recognize the exceeding nobleness of this 
great and glorious manifestation of the Divine 
Life .” 2 With this profound confession of the 
chief apostle of spiritual idealism before him, the 
Christian thinker must show that the Kingdom of 
the Spirit is exposed to two fatal dangers when 
separated from the Kingdom of Christ. The first 

1 The Way towards the Blessed Life, leet. vi. p. 390. 

2 Ibid., lect. vi. p. 391. 


DANGERS OF BREADTH. 


27 


is the challenge of its reality from the terrible 
actual of the world’s life. It may be real for 
the philosophers and mystics, but is it real for 
ordinary men? Are they organized in the life of 
the Spirit ? The belief will persist only as a com¬ 
forting dream, a holy hallucination, if it is per¬ 
manently detached from Him who is the revealer 
of the order both of the Divine and the human. 
The faith has so much against it that, unless it 
returns to its original source in Christ, it cannot 
hope to live and prevail. The second peril con¬ 
cerns the breadth of this faith. It is matter of 
history that the broadening of creeds has usually 
been accompanied by a great decay of zeal on the 
part of believers. The consciousness of this his¬ 
toric fact makes many progressively inclined 
spirits in the present generation turn back from 
progress, since it seems to mean loss of interest 
for the sinful and the weak, — loss of the passion 
of sacrifice for bringing souls into the better life. 
As a rule, and with numerous magnificent excep¬ 
tions, the incompetent in theology have been the 
zealots in practical helpfulness, while the masters 
in high theory have been indifferent to the actual 
state of the world’s life. Unless its breadth 
shall be accompanied by depth and passion, the 
modern faith will cease to be militant. Its en¬ 
thusiasm will become contemptuous pity for the 
accursed multitudes who know not the law, and 
in a generation it will die from the loss of ethical 


28 


INTRODUCTORY. 


vitality. The Kingdom of the Spirit that is not 
the Kingdom of the Spirit of Christ cannot live a 
long or a vigorous life. Bereaved of the authen¬ 
tication of the Divine history, and robbed of the 
fountains of spiritual passion that flow from the 
transcendent Person of the Lord, the broad the¬ 
ology of Unitarian, Episcopalian, and Congrega- 
tionalist alike will reduce itself to a dream, and 
the dream will at last fail of sufficient vitality to 
entertain a luxurious and sleeping church. 

VI. 

Something approaching the total problem of 
the Christian thinker of to-day begins to come 
in sight. He is living in a world indefinitely 
extended in space and time. The idea of crea¬ 
tion has undergone a marvelous transformation 
and expansion, and history is so different in reach 
and in depth to the present generation as almost 
to mean a new thing. The nations of the earth 
are no longer mere names one to another. Much 
of the business of mankind is cosmopolitan, and 
science and art and philosophy are putting on 
forms for the world. A Kingdom of the Spirit 
has risen in our day, appropriating the wealth 
of all faiths, grounding itself upon a noble phi¬ 
losophy, isolating itself from particular times and 
places, relying for support upon no history, how¬ 
ever sacred, and proposing to stand in its own 
strength against the whole hostile world of the 


THE PROBLEM OF THE TIME. 29 

actual. The question must arise whether the 
grand historic faith in Jesus as the Incarnate Son 
of God can cover this new world,— whether his 
sovereignty may be extended over it, whether its 
one great need is not the acknowledgment of his 
eternal authority. This is my profound belief, 
and out of that belief the discussion contained in 
the following pages has grown. The escape of 
our human world into the new spaces and the 
new times, the expansion of the material order to 
infinity and the extension of history to eonian 
periods, the gathering of the nations into the 
consciousness of a contemporaneous humanity, 
and the mighty growth of the Kingdom of the 
Spirit, are blessings for which it is imposible to 
be too thankful. Mankind have been brought 
out into a large place, and the daily vision is 
of broad rivers and streams. But unless Christ 
shall be installed over this new world, it will 
simply be a larger and more splendid corpse than 
the old. Over the total worlds of space, and 
time, and present humanity, and the spirit, he 
must be recognized as supreme; and these king¬ 
doms with all their glory, if that glory is not to 
fade into a dream and the highest hope of man¬ 
kind is not to be blasted, must become the king¬ 
doms of our Lord and his Christ. 

Our modern world looks as if it were getting 
ready for a new conception of Christ. There is 
gathering from all points of the compass of seri- 


30 


INTRODUCTORY. 


ous religious thought a volume of insight and 
appreciation of him that must finally overwhelm 
the public mind with the sense of his absolute¬ 
ness for humanity. To one who views Niagara 
from a distance, the promise of all that after¬ 
wards happens that one sees in the river above is 
the infinitely absorbing thing. When within a 
mile of the end, the great river grows serious, 
everything begins to mean something; there is 
hurry, and leap to right and left, tumultuous 
movement, with a darker frown settling over it, 
— a setting of the current toward the one grand 
centre, a gathering and massing of the waters for 
some magnificent purpose, a rolling together in 
a sort of terrible joy in anticipation of the final 
stupendous plunge. The cataract is constituted 
by the tremendous crowding and pushing from 
above; the van of the river must leap into the 
abyss; the force back of it is simply irresistible. 
Something like this I think I see in reference to 
the coming acceptance of Christ’s absoluteness 
for mankind. Everywhere the vision is opening 
to the reality of his presence in the world. The 
old Christ conception is becoming new in the 
current thoughts, insights, and appreciations of 
the time. There is a gathering of discernment 
toward this great centre. No one knew what 
direct appeal to God meant to the men of the 
sixteenth century until Luther’s words revealed 
it, and few men to-day have any adequate sense 


OUR DEPENDENCE UPON CHRIST . 31 

of what Christ means to the world. Some day, 
some voice or book will make the world aware of 
what is even now lying deep in its heart. Christ 
is the creator of our human world. The worth 
of the individual, the reality of social union, the 
sanctity of home, the infinite meaning of love, 
the eternal validity of our ideas of righteousness, 
freedom, and God, all the ultimate realities of 
our human world, are the creation of Christ. We 
are born into his world; we wake and sleep, work 
and rest, rejoice and weep, live and die in it. 

“ Through Him the first fond prayers are said, 

Our lips of childhood frame ; 

The last low whispers of our dead 
Are burdened with his name.” 

And this consciousness that Christ cannot be 
transcended — that, as the form of religious 
thought, the inspiration to religious feeling, the 
ideal for religious character, and the mould in 
which the ultimate philosophy of the universe 
must be run, he is absolute for humanity — will 
force itself before very long into some new and 
epoch-making expression. 

VII. 

What manner of man he must be, who is to 
give epoch-making expression to the new con¬ 
sciousness of Christ, it is not difficult to imagine. 
He must know the method of physical science, 
and be in sympathy with its great generalizations; 


32 


INTRODUCTORY. 


he must be at home in the kingdom of thought, 
familiar with the noble and fruitful ideas in phi¬ 
losophy, a companion of the imperial thinkers of 
the race; he must have at his tongue’s end the 
salient facts of Christian history, and the funda¬ 
mental conceptions and distinctions of historic 
theology; he must be a master of the new bib¬ 
lical learning, widely and deeply versed in the 
classical literatures of the world, and able to 
work in the consciousness of the true interpreta¬ 
tion of the religions of the world; and, in addi¬ 
tion to all this, he must have original power. 
For this apparatus of learning is but the intro¬ 
duction to such work as to-day needs to be done. 
In many men there are approaches to the neces¬ 
sary scholarship; but what one longs for, as the 
gift of God to our time, is some one with eyes 
for the infinite meaning of the faith that believers 
have inherited, of the conceptions under which 
they are living, of the realities from which they 
are deriving the strength and hope of existence. 
There never was such an opportunity for scholar¬ 
ship as now, and never a time when mere learn¬ 
ing was so impotent. The stuff of which faith 
and life and civilizations are made is here, and 
we need eyes for the adequate appreciation and 
use of the stuff. The loudest call is not for the 
venturesome spirit who shall ascend into heaven 
to bring Christ down, or descend into the depths 
to bring Christ up, but for the man who shall 


THE PROPHET TO COME. 33 

fathom the significance of the Word that is nigh 
our humanity. There is little hope for the pro¬ 
founder and more vital ascertainment of the con¬ 
tent of the Christ fact and conception, unless 
there shall be sent from God a man with the gift 
of sight. The Christian world is waiting for 
him: it may have to wait many years; but when 
the fullness of the time shall have come, he will 
appear. He will possess the equipment of learn¬ 
ing to which reference has been made, and he will 
sound with his sympathies the great heart of the 
present, fathom the depths of its spirit, and sur¬ 
prise the world with new revelations of the eter¬ 
nal realities of Christian faith. 

Until this great man shall come, little men 
must do with their might whatsoever their hands 
find to do. Thankful for whatever fraction of 
the ideal equipment in learning and in insight 
they may possess, they must stand to the task of 
the time with fidelity and hope. More good will 
result from a small attempt that is honest than 
from no attempt at all. The intellectual weari¬ 
ness that bids men rest, that tells them that the 
story has already been told for the ten thousandth 
time, that induces indifference by the remark 
that if told again no one will listen to it, is 
always a symptom of degeneration. There is 
reality, infinite reality, in the universe, food for 
perpetual wonder, for ever-advancing discoveries 
and ever-richer communion. While the universe 


84 


INTRODUCTORY . 


remains infinite, and while the Christian religion 
continues to be the religion of the Infinite, all 
that is needed for the surprise and zest of contin¬ 
uous discovery is the pure heart and the single 
eye. The great painting requires the best light: 
it is the day that reveals it; and it is time, trans¬ 
muted into the luminous consciousness of the 
successive generations of believers, that brings 
out the infinite meaning of Christianity. 

VIII. 

The foregoing reflections disclose the motive of 
this book. We find ourselves in the heart of a 
Christian inheritance of overwhelming wealth. 
It is the task of this as of every generation to 
ascertain its value, and to use its full dynamic 
resources. To understand the old in the light of 
the new is the most difficult and at the same 
time the most urgent of undertakings. In par¬ 
ticular, the highest conception at which humanity 
has arrived is the conception of Christ; the con¬ 
ception of God follows that, and is conditioned by 
it. We can never transcend it any more than 
we can go beyond the order of the world. We 
can only enter into a generous rivalry in the 
endeavor to fathom its infinite significance for 
mankind. This the author has tried to do, in 
such form as the limits of the discussion imposed. 
If the course of thought shall serve in any mea¬ 
sure to direct the minds of theological students 


THE CHRISTIAN INHERITANCE. 


35 


and our younger ministers to the wealth of con¬ 
tent in the Christ fact and conception, to excite 
in them the desire to explore it more deeply, and 
to concentrate many different intellects upon the 
most remunerating and hopeful of all studies, the 
author will feel that the publication of this book 
is more than justified. 

This raises the question concerning the class 
of persons for whom the author has written. The 
answer must be, for all those who feel the great¬ 
ness of the common Christian inheritance, and 
who at the same time are at a loss to understand 
its meaning for the generation to which they be¬ 
long. There are thousands in our midst who 
long to hear the wonderful words of God in their 
own tongue. Into the dialect of present thought 
the meaning of the Divine Wonder must be put. 
The understanding, burdened with the sense of 
the infiniteness of the Christian message, must 
cooperate with the living spirit. For the most 
part, then, the persons addressed in this discus¬ 
sion are those who have not broken with historic 
Christianity, who stand in the consciousness of 
its grandeur and finality, but who desire a better 
understanding of that which holds them with a 
grasp so beneficent. If any of my Unitarian 
friends should read what I have written, let me 
here make plain the fact that I am not trying to 
raise from the dead a deeply and decently buried 
controversy. It is the duty of the Unitarian, as 


86 


INTRODUCTORY. 


surely as it is mine, to endeavor to ascertain the 
worth of our common Christian inheritance; and 
if upon the central part of this vast bequest — 
the Person of Christ — we differ in our estimates, 
it must strengthen him in his own conclusion to 
see it victorious against mine. Perhaps this con¬ 
sciousness of the duty resting upon Unitarian and 
Trinitarian alike, to open up afresh the whole ques¬ 
tion of the significance of Christianity, may sub¬ 
due both from the mood of self-confident contro¬ 
versialists to the temper of patient and reverent 
thinkers. Any words of mine bearing upon Uni- 
tarianism are written, I trust it is needless to 
say, in honor and gratitude for the great move¬ 
ment of thought whose power for good has been 
so vast, but from whose conception of Christ I 
differ. Mutual recognition is the basis of all 
fruitful discussion. As a tenacious Trinitarian, I 
rejoice to recognize the benefit to the Christian 
church of the Unitarian contention. No intelli¬ 
gent religious person can fail to honor its insist¬ 
ence upon the Fatherhood of God, the real and 
therefore the divine humanity of our Lord, the 
function of history as a revelation of God, the 
place of the Bible at the centre of religious his¬ 
tory, and salvation as a moral process under the 
Spirit of God. Against a Trinitarianism that was 
tritheism, in opposition to a view of the Person 
of Christ that slighted his humanity and dishon¬ 
ored the Eternal Father, in the face of opinions 


UNITARIAN AND TRINITARIAN. 


37 


that made history godless and terrible; that con¬ 
strued salvation as outward, forensic, mechani¬ 
cal ; that regarded religion as alien to the nature 
of man, at war with the intellectual and moral 
wealth of the world, and that turned it into a 
provincial and deformed thing, — the Unitarian 
protest was wholesome, magnificent, providential. 
On the other hand, the ceaseless assertion, in the 
face of militant Unitarianism, of the enlightened 
Trinitarian’s conception of God, his search for 
the basis in the Infinite for human society, his 
construction of the Person of Christ, his view of 
the differentiating character of the Bible and his¬ 
tory within the Christian church, his persistent 
plea for the meaning of an outraged conscience, 
his appeal for an authentic and authenticated 
Mediator of the Eternal Pity, his proclamation of 
obedience to Christ as the path to spiritual free¬ 
dom, the exalted personalism in which his ideas 
have lived, and the contagious enthusiasm with 
which he has expounded them, have doubtless told 
for good upon his stout theological antagonist, 
and constitute a tradition of faith of the utmost 
significance. Whoever enters into both these 
moods, whoever studies both these traditions, if 
he is a deep-hearted man and alive to the sub¬ 
lime reach of his Christian inheritance, will feel 
the call as from God, whether he be Unitarian 
or Trinitarian or neither, to fathom to a lower 
depth, and explore on a wider scale, the unsearch- 


38 


INTRODUCTORY . 


able riches of Christ. To such a man, whatever 
his name or order, I would venture to repeat the 
invitation of the Hebrew singer, burdened as it 
is with the meaning, the privilege, and the hope 
of this new day: — 

“ 0 magnify the Lord with me, 

And let us exalt his name together! ” 1 


1 Psalm xxxiv. 3. 


CHAPTER II 


CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


ri vfxiv SokcI irepl tov Xpiarov . — Matt. xxii. 42. 

‘ ‘ The present age may be characterized as the Age of Criti¬ 
cism, — a criticism to which everything is obliged to submit. 
Religion on the ground of its sacredness, and Law on the 
ground of its majesty, not uncommonly attempt to escape this 
necessity. But by such efforts they inevitably awaken a just 
suspicion of the soundness of their foundation, and they lose all 
their claim to the unfeigned homage paid by reason to that 
which has shown itself able to stand the test of free inquiry.” 
— Kant, quoted in Edward Caird’s Critical Philosophy , vol. i. 

p. 1. 

“ Criticism is always the result of the fact that the intelli¬ 
gence has found its way blocked by some difficulty, which has 
awakened a suspicion against the universal applicability of the 
categories or methods which it has been using. In this sense 
criticism was at the birth of science, and it has mediated every 
transition to a new point of view.” — Edward Caird’s Critical 
Philosophy , vol. i. p. 42. 

“ The most distinctive and determinative element in modern 
theology is what we may term a new feeling for Christ. By 
this feeling its specific character is at once defined and ex¬ 
pressed. But we feel him more in our theology because we 
know him better in history.” — A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of 
Christ in Modern Theology , p. 3. 

“ Christ is no such theophany, no such casual, unhistorical 
being, as the Jehovah angel who visited Abraham. He is in 
and of the race, born of a woman, living in the line of human¬ 
ity, subject to human conditions, an integral part, in one view, 
of the world’s history; only bringing into it, and setting in or- 
ganific union with it, the Eternal Life.” — Horace Bushnell, 
God in Christ , p. 165. 


CHAPTER II. 


CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

The old-fashioned officialism of the Christian 
teacher is gone, the functional authority of the 
priest is at an end, the mere calling of the pro¬ 
phet is no longer a passport to power. The 
writer who in these days appears in behalf of his 
Master can hope to prevail only through the 
energy of his ideas and the nobility of his pur¬ 
pose. The Christian teacher has lost much, but 
he has gained infinitely more. This gain is part 
of a universal gain. The artistic spirit that 
moves in our century, and that irrresistibly impels 
every man whose calling has within it any of the 
higher possibilities to establish between it and 
his spirit a sacred relationship, has brought into 
existence a nobler purpose, a profounder sincer¬ 
ity, a larger vitality, and a certain mystic charm 
in the whole business of living. Here and there 
a voice grows indignant over what it calls the 
preaching of the age; but the truth is, in the 
characteristic literature of our time, preaching is 
universal, that is, all the higher forms of intellec¬ 
tual activity are carried forward with supreme 
reference to human welfare. The typical man 


42 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

to-day glories in his vocation, strives to subdue 
it to the higher necessities of his life, toils to 
get from it food for his heart no less than for 
his body, works over it that he may raise it into 
a large and beautiful utterance of his humanity. 
This modern emphasis upon the vocation of man 
is but the note of the artistic spirit under the 
inspiration of moral good. In all our typical 
thinking, the ethical good is the goal, and the 
intellectual enterprises characteristic of our time 
are adjusted to this with as much precision as the 
telescope to the star. In consequence of this 
new mood, philosophy has become the reasoned 
expression of the philosopher’s life, and “the 
quarrel of long standing between poetry and 
philosophy ” bids fair to issue in complete recon¬ 
ciliation. Science, too, is becoming more human 
every day. She is the vocation of certain master 
spirits, and by the purity of their devotion, and 
the forms she is made to assume in their hands, 
she becomes a fine art. Science is invested with 
new charm because her version of fact bears so 
powerfully upon human society. In justification 
of this remark, reference may be made to the 
scientific literature of the century. “The Origin 
of Species” is quickly followed by “The Descent 
of Man.” Evolution, as a generalization from 
the facts of nature, soon appears as the source of 
a new history of mankind. Evolutional science 
stands distinguished for its human interest and 


THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE. 


43 


its prophetic power. Scientific books, of the in¬ 
fluential class, have been constructed very much 
upon the pattern of the old-fashioned theological 
sermon, — first the doctrinal part, and then the 
practical; first the intellectual principle, and then 
the application: and as with the sermon, so with 
the scientific treatise, the discussion was under¬ 
taken and carried forward for the sake of the 
moral or immoral lesson. Even the supposed 
inhuman science of political economy is no ex¬ 
ception. As Professor Marshall says: “ Ethical 
forces are among those of which the economist 
has to take account. Attempts have indeed been 
made to construct an abstract science with regard 
to the actions of an 4 economic man ’ who is under 
no ethical influences, and who pursues pecuniary 
gain warily and energetically, but mechanically 
and selfishly. But they have never been success¬ 
ful. No one could be relied on better than the 
economic man to endure toil and sacrifice with 
the unselfish desire to make provision for his 
family; and his normal motives have always been 
tacitly assumed to include the family affections. 
But if these motives are included, why not also 
all other altruistic motives, the action of which is 
so far uniform in any class, at any time and 
place, that it can be reduced to general rule ?” 1 
In a word, life is the great finality in our cen¬ 
tury, and out of its perplexities and possibilities 

1 Principles of Political Economy. Preface to first edition, p. x. 


44 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


all the higher forms of rational activity have 
grown, and to it they return for judgment . 1 
Thus the artistic spirit, which is essentially a 
preaching spirit, is going from strength unto 
strength. The typical thinkers are everywhere 
doing their work in veneration of human life, 
and their highest hope is fixed upon a beneficent 
ministry to mankind. 

Bereaved, or rather let it be said mercifully 
relieved, of all the officialism of his profession, 

1 This characteristic of the greater literary activity of the 
century, what Matthew Arnold would call its high seriousness, 
is self-evident. The most artistic of all Victorian poets — Ten¬ 
nyson— draws his inspiration from life, and the distinct, pre¬ 
meditated end of his art is a beautiful ministry to life. (^ How¬ 
ever the literary fraternity may dislike the statement or resent 
the imputation, the fact remains, that all great poetry is great 
preaching^ It is illumination and inspiration for man in his hu¬ 
man relations. What differentiates the literary movement that 
began with Carlyle and Emerson, from the superficial and worth¬ 
less critical work that immediately preceded it, is its ethical 
insight and purpose. To these two writers we are indebted more 
than to all others, for carrying into literature the ethical im¬ 
pulse, and for measuring the productions of genius by ethical 
standards. Matthew Arnold was nothing more or less than a 
gifted commentator upon literature, an admirable preacher, who 
took his texts from unconventional quarters. The same remark 
applies to Ruskin, and indeed to all the greater spirits in the 
characteristic literary movement of the century. (The pith of it 
all is the preaching of righteousness, the application of noble 
ideas to life,) At present a new school has risen that knows not 
Joseph, and its life is likely to resemble that of Pharaoh under 
the plagues, and the waves of the Red Sea. Meanwhile, innocent 
Egypt must suffer from Ibsen and his set, and poor Israel face a 
new oppressor. 


VOCATION AND LIFE. 


45 


the Christian teacher glories in his vocation. It 
is to him what the flute or harp was to the wan¬ 
dering minstrel in ancient times, —a thing insep¬ 
arable from his being, his sweet companion in 
hours of solitude, the instrument through which 
he poured gladness into the hearts of the poor 
and sorrowing, revealed the privilege and in¬ 
formed the zest of happier existence, and set 
forth the whole sublime mystery of man’s strug¬ 
gle in this world; the voice, too, that carried his 
own thought and feeling into the presence of the 
Infinite. This new relation of calling to life, in 
the case of the Christian teacher, must raise the 
deepest questions. There will be the vital sub¬ 
jective question of purpose, ambition, sincerity, 
intensity, — the question that demands a certain 
prophetic nobility in the attitude and tone of the 
soul. Then will come the great objective ques¬ 
tion as to the truth to be taught, the ideas to be 
communicated, the place that Christ occupies in 
the faith of the teacher, and the place that he 
should occupy in the faith of the time. 

There is, we are told, a Christ of yesterday, a 
Christ of to-day, and a Christ of the endless 
future. Through these three grand divisions of 
time, men look up and behold the unchanging 
countenance of the Christ of God. Still perma¬ 
nence does not mean monotony, and therefore 
the Christ of to-day must have the deepest inter¬ 
est for the men of to-day. The Eternal takes on 


46 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

new meaning for mankind as it looks through the 
sum-total of the conditions amid which men are 
actually living. While one glories in the Christ 
of history, and lifts one’s self to greet the Christ 
of the future, it is one’s special privilege to be¬ 
hold Christ in the struggles and hopes of this 
generation. The subject of this book is the eter¬ 
nal Christ as the Christ of to-day, and in the 
present chapter we are to consider him as he 
stands in the faith of our time. 

I. 

It is a vast comfort to remember that Christ is 
already here, that his energy is at work upon the 
life of the world. The largest hopefulness may 
nourish itself upon the great utterance of the 
apostle: “ He was in the world, and the world was 
made by him, and the world knew him not .” 1 , 
The divine order of the world is here from the 
morning of creation; it waits for the recognition 
of mankind; and, although embarrassed by human 
ignorance, it is still doing its work. Nothing is 
truer than that life ever goes before, and is ever 
greater than, the comprehending intellect. The 
outward world has done a quite infinite work for 
the individual mind before it occurs to it to ask 
about its reality. Color and form are present 
from the beginning, bewitching the eye and giving 
radiance to feeling; the forces and the melodies of 
1 John i. 10. 


EDUCATION THROUGH NATURE. 


47 


nature do their best work while the young soul is 
alive with receptivity and the ear is in devout 
self-surrender. The music of the running brook, 
the freshness of the meadow, the solemn expanse 
of lake and sea, the gloom and grandeur of valley 
and mountain, the ineffable outgoings of morning 
and evening, the sublime procession of the stars, 
reach the heart from the first, form the intellect 
from its earliest awakening, carry into the mental 
life from its birth an atmosphere, a color, and 
tone and power that defy analysis. The fibres 
of man’s being grow finer and less perceptible as 
they leave the centres behind; and they reach 
out to infinity, ramify among the deepest myste¬ 
ries of the universe, and entwine themselves with 
the God who speaks to him both from without 
and from within. The world, the outward world, 
is an incalculable power upon life, — physical, 
aesthetic, intellectual, — long before it becomes 
a problem to the reason. Because of its prior 
standing in life, in virtue of the rich human in¬ 
terests that subsist upon its bounty and that 
refresh themselves from its beauty, the outward 
world becomes a living question for the scientific 
intellect. In the same way Christ comes before 
the minds of men to-day. There was possible, 
at one time, an outside opinion of Christ. Whom 
do men say that I am ? Jesus was interested in 
the merely speculative opinion concerning him 
among the leaders of thought in his generation. 


48 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

Of course he regarded, as every one must, all 
merely outside notions as worthless, except for 
their human interest. When Jesus turned and 
said to his disciples, But whom say ye that I am ? 
he appealed from the mere intellect to the intel¬ 
lect operating upon a basis of life, — from the 
understanding working upon an object outside 
the circle of its interests and loves to a mind in 
the ranges of whose intuition the material for an 
adequate judgment was already present. It was 
because of his prior standing in the life of his 
disciples that Jesus expected from them an ap¬ 
proximately adequate judgment about himself. 

Now this is of course infinitely more the char¬ 
acter of our time. For nearly two thousand 
years Christ has had standing in the life of the 
race. The stream of his thought has been en¬ 
riching all the centuries; the sound of his voice . 
has never died away; the ideals that he embod¬ 
ied have been the guiding star of our higher 
civilization; his example has been the alluring 
and unforgetable picture hung in the memory 
and sympathy of all the great religious leaders 
since he lived, and his spirit has been unceasingly 
at work upon humanity. Instinct, habit moral 
and intellectual, custom and law, institution do¬ 
mestic, civic, and religious, the whole sweep of 
our civilization, has been played upon, awakened, 
and informed, wrought over from its first estate, 
and, in spite of continuous and brutal resistance, 


CHBIST IN THE EPISTLES. 


49 


charged with the power of Christ. To abstract 
Christ from our civilization would be to take 
the sun out of the heavens, the soul out of the 
body;* What we should have left would be a 
frozen humanity, a dead symbol with the reality 
forever gone. I repeat, therefore, that it is be¬ 
cause of the prior and mighty standing which 
Christ has in the life of the world that he be¬ 
comes for each new generation a problem for the 
reason. 

The wonderful thing about the letters which 
compose so large a part of the New Testament 
is the overwhelming consciousness of Christ that 
one finds in them. The writers are flooded with 
Christ. Their thoughts spontaneous and deliber¬ 
ate, their beliefs old and new, their ideals and 
enthusiasms, their uplook into heaven and their 
outlook upon the earth, are but different versions 
of the dominating soul of their Master. The 
whole movement of their existence is penetrated 
by his presence. It is as if some great river had 
been touched in all its fountains, and sweetened 
in all its tributaries by a perfume from heaven, 
so that henceforth the volume of its waters is but 
the moving body of that mighty, fragrant spirit. 
The stream of the apostolic consciousness is thus 
filled and transformed by Christ. These men 
are believers in God, but they are believers in 
God through Christ; they preach the love of 
God to the nations, but it is the love of God in 


50 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

Christ; they look for a new heaven and a new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, hut it is 
the righteousness of God in Christ. The New 
Testament writers are in captivity to their Lord; 
they are his bond-servants; his empire over them 
is something amazing, and without a parallel in 
human history. Through these writers we behold 
an entire generation in the rapture of a great 
love. These multitudinous lovers can think of 
nothing, can talk of nothing, can dream of no¬ 
thing, except in the line of their sublime and 
devouring passion. Out of that mood came the 
thought of the ascendency, the divinity, the essen¬ 
tial deity, of their Master. The apostolic faith 
in the deity of Christ was an outgrowth of his 
sovereignty over apostolic life. 

More wonderful still is the fact that our whole 
Western civilization is under the spell of the same , 
Presence. Not indeed so intensely, nor so nobly, 
but yet as truly, as in the apostolic age, is our 
entire Western civilization under the dominating 
consciousness of Christ. I venture the statement 
that it is almost as impossible to think of God 
and man and human society, through any other 
medium than Christ, as it is to look up at the 
stars, or abroad upon the earth, in any other way 
than through the world’s enfolding atmosphere. 
Our whole thought of God and man; our entire 
working philosophy of life; our modes of intellec¬ 
tual vision, types of feeling, habits of will; our 


CHRIST IN OUR CIVILIZATION. 


51 


instinctive, customary, rational, emotional, insti¬ 
tutional, and social existence, — is everywhere 
encompassed and interpenetrated by Christ. His 
empire over our civilization is complete in this 
sense, that it exists and expands only under his 
power, and cannot define or describe itself except 
in terms of his teaching and character. We are 
here under the shadow of an Infinite Name; we 
are living and dying in the heart of an enfolding 
Presence. We are compelled to acknowledge that 
the secret moulding energy of our entire civiliza¬ 
tion is the mind of Christ. It is out of this con¬ 
sciousness of the indwelling, wide-spreading, and 
overruling mind of Christ that the belief comes 
in his essential deity. The sign of his supre¬ 
macy is everywhere. When our Western world 
thinks of infanthood and motherhood, it still be¬ 
holds him in the arms of Mary. When men look 
upon the loveliness of childhood, they are under 
the spell of his words, “ Suffer the little children, 
and forbid them not to come unto me: for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven .” 1 When they 
rejoice in the glory of youth, they behold again 
Jesus fixing his divine look upon the young ruler, 
and pouring over him the tides of a consecrating 
love; when they go to the wedding, the marriage 
feast at Cana of Galilee is before them; when 
they walk to the house of sorrow, they are under 
his shadow who comforted the mourners in Beth- 


1 Matt. xix. 14. 


52 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

any, and who opened the grave of Lazarus; when 
they revere and trust God, it is his God whom 
they revere and trust; when they strive to bring 
in a better day for humanity, it is his kingdom 
that they seek; when they hate sin, it is the vital 
denial of the Highest that he showed to be so 
fearful; when they abhor hypocrisy, the image in 
their thoughts is that of the Pharisee whom his 
scorn transfixed; when they loathe treachery, it 
is Judas Iscariot of whom they think; when they 
speak of the moral order of the universe, and the 
recompense of the just and the unjust, it is the 
heaven and the hell of his teaching that mankind 
have in mind. The whole noble movement of 
Western civilization and the entire mass of its 
baseness have upon them the mark of the Lord. 
The truth of life is his truth, and its convention¬ 
alities, respectabilities, shams and hypocrisies, 
disguise themselves in the lustre of his words. 
The total Western world is under his sovereignty. 
When the sun is descending clear and with un¬ 
shorn glory, and one looks fixedly upon the flam¬ 
ing orb for even a few moments, after one has 
turned away the image remains, and, upon what¬ 
ever object the eyes rest, one still beholds the per¬ 
sistent form of the great sun. Christ has once 
for all fixed the attention of the world upon him¬ 
self, and henceforth it can never get his divine 
form out of its vision. He is imprinted forever 
upon the mental retina of the race, and one must 


THE ETHICAL CHRIST. 


53 


continue to look upon the soul, and human so¬ 
ciety, and God himself, with eyes that have Christ 
burned into their substance. A fact like this 
wields an elemental power over the conceptions 
that Christian thinkers frame as to the dignity of 
their Master. Christology is not born of imagi¬ 
nation : it is a serious attempt to give adequate 
explanation to an indisputable fact. Account 
for this omnipresent Christ, for this name that 
conditions our civilization, for this life that our 
world cannot transcend, apart from his deity, 
believers in him feel that they cannot. 


II. 

One great tendency of the time, even among 
those who have not broken with the past, and 
who are in the line of historic discipleship, is to 
rest in an ethical Christ, asking no questions of 
a metaphysical nature, and in fact denying their 
pertinence and importance. The ethical passion 
of the Ritschlian school in Germany gives it a 
vast power over the young soul in its glowing, 
impatient initial Christian experience. It comes 
in the name of what is felt, and it brushes aside 
as irrelevant a host of things that seem full of 
hard problems for the student. One must sym¬ 
pathize to a considerable extent with this move¬ 
ment on its native soil. When on the one hand 
speculation has become, what it is so apt to 
become in Germany, extreme and almost a disease, 


54 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

and when on the other traditional orthodoxy has 
become incredible, a return to experience and the 
Christ of the heart, such as the modern Ritsch- 
lians represent, must be wholesome and indeed 
providential. But it may be all this and yet be 
far enough from adequacy. Among ourselves, 
whether for better or for worse, the same ten¬ 
dency is growing. In the minds of the younger 
men, one finds metaphysical infirmity and agnos¬ 
ticism joined with the sincerest homage in the 
presence of Jesus. The purely ethical apprehen¬ 
sion of Christ is coming to be the fashion, the 
moral picture of him in the Gospels, the image 
of him in feeling and in social reform, while 
across the sunless wastes of thought no shadow of 
him can be discovered. The Holy Spirit is as¬ 
sumed to have to do only with the needs of the 
heart; revelation is conceived to be of eternal 
life; and dogma is but the product of the human 
understanding, giving, and giving necessarily, an 
intellectual form to its spiritual life. This type 
of opinion, wherever it appears, rejoices in the 
ethical element in the Gospels ; is fond of con¬ 
trasting primitive Christianity with that developed 
in the course of the centuries; hints or declares, 
according to the temperament and environment 
of the writer, that the evolution in creed is but 
an alien accretion; and announces that the origi¬ 
nal divine message was of a transcendent ethical 
Personality founding a kingdom through the in- 


OBJECTION TO DOGMA. 


55 


fluence of life rather than the power of ideas. 
A distinction is made, and insisted upon as funda¬ 
mental, between moral Christology and metaphy¬ 
sical, and it is implied or contended, as the case 
may be, that there is no material in the trust¬ 
worthy evangelical narrative for a metaphysical 
construction of the person of Jesus. In the 
strong words of a recent writer, it is held that 
“it is impossible for any one, whether he be a 
student of history or no, to fail to notice a differ¬ 
ence of both form and content between the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The 
Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a 
new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather 
than formulates them; the theological conceptions 
which underlie it belong to the ethical rather 
than the speculative side of theology; metaphy¬ 
sics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a 
statement partly of historical facts, and partly of 
dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which 
it contains would probably have been unintelligi¬ 
ble to the first disciples; ethics have no place in 
it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peas¬ 
ants, the other to a world of Greek philoso¬ 
phers.” 1 One could not wish for a franker state¬ 
ment of the supposed antithesis between moral 
and metaphysical Christianity. The quotation is 
made, not for the purpose of refuting the gener¬ 
alization of Dr. Hatch, but for the sake of defin- 
1 Dr. Hatch, The Hibbert Lectures , 1888, p. 1. 


56 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

mg the class to whom reference is made. In the 
statement of the Hibbert lecturer there is a 
breadth and power that make it representative. 
There is abundant room for an answer in detail 
to a series of remarks so sweeping, considered as 
the utterance of an individual scholar; but it is 
more in accordance with the purpose of this dis¬ 
cussion to regard them in their representative 
character. 

There are various reasons why this view should 
be popular. In the first place, its great and just 
emphasis upon eternal life as the final thing 
in the gospel message, and the supreme thing 
in the religious spirit, must exercise a powerful 
attraction. There is a vast positive here, around 
which all believers will willingly assemble, as 
men gather about a great fire in midwinter. In 
the second place, it is an easy view. It puts no 
problem before the Christian intellect of an over¬ 
mastering kind. It excommunicates philosophy 
from the household of faith, and sometimes, as 
in the ftitschlian metaphysics, calls it in to dis¬ 
credit metaphysics, undertakes to make philo¬ 
sophical theology commit suicide. Then, again, 
to reject the grand historic construction of the 
Person of Christ, and to rest in a metaphysical 
negative regarding him, serves as a cover for the 
real opinion that one may not have the courage 
to avow. The New Testament is treated with 
the boldest freedom by modern methods of inter- 


THE CHRIST OF NATURALISM. 


57 


pretation, and students in these days feel that 
it is very difficult indeed to make out just how 
far the supernatural in the way of the miracu¬ 
lous enters into the genuine evangelical narrative. 
Further, a certain skeptical mood reigns with ref¬ 
erence to all so-called interruptions of the law of 
uniformity. The miraculous is quietly ruled out, 
or left to fall from the tree of faith like a dead 
leaf: the ethical alone is real and imperishable; 
all else is but the legendary dress of the hour . 1 

Now all this seems to me but a passing phase 
of religious thought, a sign of intellectual uncer¬ 
tainty and immaturity, an evidence of the lack 
of thoroughness upon a fundamental problem of 
Christian faith. If indeed the ethical Christ is 
held to give us the metaphysical, if the apprehen¬ 
sion of Christ through moral feeling is but the 
method of reaching his true character, his ulti¬ 
mate and universal importance, his final relation 


1 The convergence upon the ethical Christ from quarters the 
most opposite is one of the most interesting studies of to-day. 
The naturalistic writer, Pfleiderer, rests in the moral Christ; 
the Ritschlian does the same ; while philosophical writers like 
Edward Caird move toward a similar goal. The idealism 
that works through the established order of nature, and that 
abhors the idea of the transcendence of nature implied in mi¬ 
racle ; the school of feeling, and the dynamics of life, and that 
detests the presence of metaphysics in religion as that of an 
alien ; and the professional Hegelian metaphysician, give one 
substantially the same Christ. They emphasize the character, 
and leave the subject of it an enigma, or reduce him wholly to 
the human category. 


58 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

to God and to man, it is something deserving the 
profoundest respect. The ethical method is the 
way to the heart of Christ, the way to the heart 
of the universe. But, in this sense of the term, 
the ethical reaches and holds within it the ulti¬ 
mate reality; while the form of opinion which 
seems to me superficial is that which substitutes 
the Christ of feeling for the Christ of truth. It 
must never be forgotten that the word “ethical ” is 
a term of character and not of being; that it is 
descriptive of quality and not of the reality; that 
it calls attention to the inner habit and the out¬ 
ward conduct, while it leaves undefined the per¬ 
sonal soul that is the living source of all. The 
moral attributes of Christ may be, as I thor¬ 
oughly believe they are, the only open path to a 
true appreciation of his nature; but it must be 
affirmed that Christ is something more than his 
exalted ethical character. There is a personal 
centre and source of the thought, and the feeling, 
and the purpose, and the acts that reveal him: 
that personal living centre is the ultimate and 
real Christ; and that ultimate and real Christ 
may be measured against God and against man, 
and his place in relation to both approximately 
ascertained. It is impossible to account for char¬ 
acter in any human being without the assumption 
of a personal spirit whose character it is. Char¬ 
acter must be the character of some one; and 
Christ is not merely an exalted ethical habit, but 


CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY. 59 


a being to whom that exalted ethical habit belongs. 
The classic illustration of Alice in Wonderland 
must here be repeated. A cat without a grin one 
can conceive, but a grin without a cat is impos¬ 
sible. A personal being without exalted ethical 
habit is possible enough, but an exalted ethical 
habit without a personal being as the source of it 
is unthinkable. Wherever one sees a smile, one 
finds a face wearing it; and wherever one discov¬ 
ers character, one beholds a personal being bear¬ 
ing it. For ethics without metaphysics it is diffi¬ 
cult to have any real respect. Here are the com¬ 
mon relations of mankind, — husband and wife, 
parent and child, citizen and man. Here are 
personal beings in a certain order of relationship. 
The ethics of humanity are the outcome of the 
metaphysics of humanity; the moral habits and 
acts of the race have their source in the moral 
being of the race. The ethical character of Christ, 
the ethical character of God, implies the personal 
reality of Christ, the personal reality of God. 
Beneath the sublime phenomenon of moral worth 
in all its forms there is being; and the promise 
whose perpetual fulfillment is the support of the 
moral order of the world is the old one, “ the Eter¬ 
nal God is thy refuge, and underneath thee are 
the everlasting arms .” 1 One can sooner build a 
house without foundations, lay railroad tracks in 
the air, or enable the ocean to dispense with its 
1 Deut. xxxiii. 27. 


60 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

bed in the heart of the earth, than to erect an en¬ 
during ethical scheme of humanity apart from the 
reality of God and the personal soul of the indi¬ 
vidual man. Feeling viewed as the foundation of 
thought is great; considered as the raw material 
of rational life, the intuition that gives the very 
impact upon the heart of the supreme spiritual 
Presence, it is to be regarded with veneration. 
There are no words sufficient to celebrate its 
praise. Men are allowed to have these unsounded 
depths where God is evermore at work, and it is 
permissible, and indeed necessary, to appeal to 
the unfathomable life which is the gift of God. 
But feeling used as a substitute for reason is one 
of the least worthy of things. It is giving a stone 
for bread, a scorpion for an egg. For what is 
the use of feeling when its rational value is no 
longer ascertainable ? The worst sort of subjec¬ 
tivity, the hopeless circle of the ]og in the whirl¬ 
pool, is involved in the easy substitution of the 
merely ethical Christ for the Christ both ethical 
and real. 

The greatest objection, however, to this entire 
mode of thought is, that it puts asunder what God 
has joined together,—life and philosophy. Its 
assumption, conscious or unconscious, that the 
Holy Spirit is not concerned in the development 
of theological thought, nor manifest in the intel¬ 
lectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative 
heresy of our generation. The easy way in which 


CHRIST THE TEACHER. 


61 


it is taken for granted that life yields the imme¬ 
diate and perfect intuition of God, and that the 
interpretations, the rational constructions, of this 
life are wholly of man’s device, is extraordinary. 
For the Divine Spirit must be concerned with 
the sum of human interests, he must be in the 
whole activity of man; otherwise the conclusion 
is inevitable that humanity is utterly destitute of 
his presence. The distinction between religion 
and theology, between the forces of the spiritual 
life and the operations and results of reflective 
thought, is valid; but the inference from this dif¬ 
ference, that the God who is the helper of the 
heart in its distress is not also the guide of the 
intellect in its perplexities, is unwarrantable. 
The serious and noble life of the world, both on 
its rational and on its moral sides, is the product, 
through imperfect human personalities, of the 
Eternal Spirit. Thought is as sovereign in Christ 
as feeling, the prophetic office as the priestly. 
Indeed, the best single characterization of Jesus 
would be the teacher. Everything depends upon 
the validity of his thought of God, his conception 
of the soul, his ideal for human society, his vision 
of a universe passionately sympathetic toward 
man in his hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely essential 
to his ethics; his characterization of the ultimate 
realities in heaven and in earth, to his practical 
ministry. If his thought is a dream, his en¬ 
deavor for man is a delusion. 


62 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


The same remark applies to the rest of the 
New Testament. The first thing that impresses 
one in reading the Epistles is the supremacy of 
the prophetic mind. They are charged with 
thought, these apostles of the Lord. Granted 
that they fall short of the mind of their Master, 
they also fail no less signally in the reproduc¬ 
tion of his life. Imperfection is part of their 
nature, but it is as conspicuous in their character 
as in their philosophy. If these writings are 
precious for the spirit that they enshrine, they 
are equally grand for the scheme of the universe, 
and man’s place in it, that is implicit in them 
all, and that in some of them receives even monu¬ 
mental expression. To say that it is conceivable 
that, some day in the far future, the church may 
transcend apostolic thought, is at once granted; 
but it is likewise thinkable, and indeed not at all 
unlikely, that believers ages hence may trans¬ 
cend the fullness and glory of apostolic life. If 
the church is ever carried so far in her thought, 
it will be on the strength of the Holy Spirit; if 
she is ever lifted so high in her life, it will be by 
the same Divine Helper. The intellectual and 
moral aspects of Christianity, whether as found in 
Jesus or as seen in his immediate followers, are 
the aspects of the one undivided truth. 

Christian history has, within the present gen¬ 
eration, been subjected to a new operation. 
What is termed the scientific analysis of the his- 


THE ANALYSIS OF HISTORY. 


63 


tory of Christianity has been undertaken. The 
initial assumption is that the religion of Jesus is 
a fixed quantity; that it can be definitely charac¬ 
terized, if not measured, as it goes forth into 
the world from his spirit; and that it can be 
traced, in the general stream of historic opinion, 
tradition, institution, ritual, and life, as a dis¬ 
tinct current. This certainly is an interesting 
line of investigation, and cannot fail to exhibit in 
a fresh way the many contributions which have 
been made from many sources toward the grand 
compound of historic Christianity. But the new 
study becomes serious when one discovers that it 
is undertaken, in many instances at least, in the 
interest of a certain type of theology. If it can 
be shown, as it certainly can, that Greek philoso¬ 
phy, and Stoic preaching, and Roman law, insti¬ 
tution, and ritual went to the formation of early 
Christianity, it is assumed that these contribu¬ 
tions are alien elements, — discolorations of the 
stream of the primitive faith, which, now that it 
is flowing through the fine white sand of exhaus¬ 
tive historical analysis, is regaining its original 
purity. It is this assumption that must be re¬ 
sisted ; for it amounts to the denial of the worth 
of history, and the negation of Christianity as 
the religion of the Absolute Spirit. The earth is 
the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; and a living 
religion, like a living man, must subsist upon 
the food available for it in the historic process. 


64 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

Christianity is the Holy Spirit of assimilation 
and growth, and its task is to redeem the intel¬ 
lectual treasure of the world, no less than its 
vital; to gather together from the four winds of 
heaven the elect thoughts of mankind; to build 
into itself all the truth and all the love in the 
world, and to carry them onward to their perfect 
forms. Historic analysis for the sake of a deeper 
insight into the original vital principle of Chris¬ 
tian thought and life, and in the interest of a 
profounder homage to that which must be the 
standard for all development, the mind and heart 
of the Lord, is worthy of all honor. Historic 
analysis for the purpose of showing the alien 
origin of a given form of Christian thought, and 
with the hope that the result may be an entire 
discrediting of all endeavors after a rational the¬ 
ology, is vitiated by its animus, and doomed by its 
collision with man’s ineradicable belief that he 
is living in an intelligible universe. 

The reason given for refusing to recognize re¬ 
flective thought as essential to Christianity is 
that most of its historic forms have been tran¬ 
scended. Poor psychology and poor metaphysics 
disfigure the annals of the church. We cannot 
hope, so it is contended, to do more than repeat 
the unavailing efforts of Origen and Athanasius, 
Tertullian and Augustine. That which can be 
transcended cannot be an essential part of reli¬ 
gion. Now this argument proves too much; for 


UNITY OF THOUGHT AND LIFE. 65 

it applies equally to ethics, and indeed to the 
whole life of these Christian centuries. The 
moral problem, the problem of the conscience, has 
been as far from solution, the eonian search for 
righteousness for the individual and society has 
been as far from finality, as has been the case 
with the question of reason. If we abandon the¬ 
ology because it lies in its nature to be tran¬ 
scended, we must abandon life, for an equal im¬ 
perfection lies upon all its forms. Life is indeed 
deeper infinitely than the intellect, but its ethical 
problem is still as far from solution as is the 
rational problem. To live the perfect life is at 
present as impossible as it is to have all know¬ 
ledge. We know in part, and out of that partial 
knowledge build our theologies; we are not per¬ 
fected in love, and out of that imperfection we 
construct our lives. If the note of incomplete¬ 
ness discredits thought, it must also discredit life. 

The Christian idea of the Holy Spirit would 
seem to make impossible this denial of the worth 
of history, both on its intellectual and on its 
moral sides. The tasks of the reason and of the 
conscience are infinite; they are nothing less than 
the knowledge and love of God reproduced in 
human life. The problems of truth and right¬ 
eousness are the problems of the Divine Spirit, 
and he will solve both through the historic pro¬ 
cess. The man who undertakes to do the work 
of an entire age, like some father of the higher 


66 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


criticism or some theologian who would stereo¬ 
type thought for the church for all time, is fore¬ 
ordained to failure. Nations and ages have their 
work, and it is too vast for other hands. Hu¬ 
manity has its task, and only humanity can 
accomplish it; rather let us say that the Eternal 
Spirit has his task in the revelation of the mind 
and heart of God to mankind, and only God, 
operating through the entire term of history, can 
achieve God’s work. The moral faith cannot 
long survive the death of the rational; the trust 
that is not overcome before the vital obligation 
set forth in the august and almost incredible 
words, u Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your 
heavenly Father is perfect ,” 1 depends upon the 
confidence that accepts the privilege of know¬ 
ing the love of Christ that passeth knowledge . 2 
Knowledge and character, truth and righteous¬ 
ness, are equally impossible as finalities in time; 
they are humanity’s task for eternity. 

III. 

Taking now a wider view of the faith of our 
time, we can see that certain great advances have 
been made in the proper intellectual appreciation 
of the Person of our Lord. His representative 
value manward was never so clearly discerned as 
now. It is one of the magnificent commonplaces 
of the Christian teaching of the time that, in 
1 Matt. y. 48. 2 Eph. iii. 19. 


THE CONFESSIONAL IN FAITH. 


67 


obedience to the Divine Will and in self-sacrifice 
among men, Jesus is our supreme example. 
There is in him a mighty imitable, reproducible 
character. The imitation of Christ is the task 
of humanity. His followers are those who are 
seeking to become what he was; his disciples are 
the men who are trying to learn the art of right 
living from him. 

This truth, now a commonplace of Christian 
faith, has again and again been almost lost from 
the consciousness of the church, and that, too, 
for long periods of time. The Augustinian 
thought so emphasized the evil in human nature 
as to call for a conscious crisis in the life of the 
individual before he could think of himself, with¬ 
out additional sin, as a candidate for the purity 
and elevation of the New Testament morality. 
The sense of sin burdened the conscience with 
the duty of confession. Even Augustine’s great¬ 
est book — that by which he has spoken to the 
deepest in man, that by which he speaks to the 
heart of to-day — has this great defect, that it 
makes the confessional element too prominent in 
the duty of the Christian life. The confessional 
character is in all true faith; for how can man 
measure his poor actual against the ideal without 
the feeling of utter humiliation? And it must 
ever remain a comfort to express in hymn and 
prayer, in secret meditation and solitary dialogue 
with God, one’s sense of nothingness in the pres- 


68 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

ence of ideal excellence. If one is an honest 
man, one will crave the privilege of confession 
upon discovering the fact that one’s life is far 
away from conformity with its standard. It is 
not an unjust criticism that holds that the absence 
from Christian experience of the confessional 
note argues a shallow soul. For it is undeni¬ 
able that, as one enters the classic literature of 
the spirit alive with the sense of God, one hears 
at once and forever the deep and unceasing 
voice of lamentation. The Psalms, the great 
hymns of the church, Dante’s monumental poem, 
and indeed all the profounder religious utterances 
of mankind, are shot through with the sense of 
unspeakable regret and grief. There is such 
disparity between the vision and the conscious 
attainment of the inspired spirit that the cry 
must come: “Woe is me! for I am undone; 
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell 
in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine 
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts !” 1 
Here is the consciousness which, when it becomes 
exclusive, makes all hearty acceptance of Christ 
as the moral standard for common men absolutely 
impossible. It is a magnificent consciousness, 
and it has a permanent place in Christian experi¬ 
ence, but it must be qualified by that other con¬ 
sciousness yet more magnificent expressed in the 
apostolic words, “I can do all things in him that 
1 Isa. yi. 5. 


OUR DEBT TO UNITARIANS. 


69 


strengthened me .” 1 But for the mystics, this 
consciousness, that the morality of God in Christ 
is the morality for man, would have been lost to 
the world for more than a thousand years. Un¬ 
der the supremacy of the Augustinian and Cal- 
vinistic conception of human nature, the conscious¬ 
ness of sin necessarily tends to become exclusive, 
and the task of Christian living to become more 
and more a lamentation over the defect of charac¬ 
ter and a despair of goodness. More and more 
salvation must become, not the act by which God 
educates his children and claims his own, but 
the triumph of Almighty pity over sheer worth¬ 
lessness. This overdone sense of depravity, hard¬ 
ened into dogma, stood for centuries against the 
truth that the morality of God in Christ is the 
morality for mankind. The truth has at last 
prevailed, and at this point of belief Christian 
people everywhere are under an immense debt to 
the great Unitarian leaders. It is impossible to 
be too thankful for these words of Dr. Channing: 
“Expect no good from Jesus any further than 
you clothe yourselves with excellence. He can 
impart to you nothing so precious as himself, as 
his own mind. Look up to the illustrious Son of 
God with the conviction that you may become 
one with him in thought, in feeling, in power, in 
holiness. The most lamentable skepticism on 
earth, and incomparably the most common, is a 
1 Philippians v. 13. 


70 CHEIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

skepticism as to the greatness, powers, and high 
destinies of human nature. In this greatness I 
desire to cherish an unvarying faith. Tell me 
not of the universal corruption of the race. Hu¬ 
manity has already, in not a few instances, borne 
conspicuously the likeness of Christ and God. 
In such men I learn that the soul was made in 
God’s image, and made to conform itself to the 
loveliness and greatness of his Son .” 1 The title 
of the discourse from which these words are 
taken — The Imitableness of Christ’s Character 
— might well serve as a summary of the vast 
service that Unitarianism has rendered to the 
Christian belief of the century. Channing, and 
Hedge, and Peabody, and Furness, and their 
contemporaries, refused to be forever shut up 
within the consciousness of moral defect and in¬ 
firmity. They held that the morality of Jesus 
has power to give life to the spirit to which it 
comes; that it elicits into clearness and strength 
the aboriginal human endowment; sets free the 
divine in man’s constitution, and invests it with 
new vigor and prophetic invincibility. The lead¬ 
ers of the Unitarian movement were men of 
exalted spirit; in them the ethical and religious 
principles lived in great power. They were un¬ 
impeachable examples of the high doctrine that 
they proclaimed. Largely through their inspired 
fidelity to their high teaching, the idea has become 
1 Channing’s Works, p. 316. 


TOTAL DEPRAVITY. 71 

current again that the example of Christ is the 
standard for man. 

There is no reason why this clear achievement 
of Christian faith should not remain. It has far 
less to fear from the avowed enemies of high 
morality than from a narrow religious zeal. No¬ 
thing can obliterate the modern sense of amena¬ 
bleness to the ethics of Christ except a fresh 
deluge of the old exclusive consciousness of human 
sinfulness. That which, when normal and pres¬ 
ent in just proportions, is the sign of a noble 
spirit, becomes in its exclusive form among 
men at large the utter wreck of moral hope. 
The despair of goodness is followed by the aban¬ 
donment of all effort to reach it. The conscious¬ 
ness of sin, so noble and so mighty when it exists 
as a secondary consciousness, turns out to be, 
when it assumes an exaggerated depth, one of the 
worst plagues of human society. And the door 
is ever open for the return of this evil in the 
disparity between the vision and the achievement 
of the Christian life. We see the Hebrew leader 
upon Pisgah, surveying in a few moments the 
land of promise, mastering in vision in less than 
an hour that which his people required centuries 
to accomplish. So far does vision outrun attain¬ 
ment. How is the despair which is the almost 
sure result of this experience to be met? Are 
we not on the edge of the old bottomless guff of 
total depravity? Are we not on the point of 


72 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


surrendering as a mere dream the great convic¬ 
tion, now so deep and clear, that the morality of 
Christ is the morality for man ? 

It must be remembered that character is an 
achievement in time. One must think of the 
eternal, ineffable vision in which God lives; one 
must not forget that even the Creator is compelled 
to wait for the realization of his purpose. His 
infinite ineffable vision is his habitation, in that 
he waits for the song of the morning stars, and 
the shoutings of the sons of God; in that he 
waits for the birth of time, the growth of our 
planet, the appearance of life, the coming of 
man, the advent of his Son, and the eternal con¬ 
summation of his kingdom. God is a beholding 
and a waiting God. The Creative Spirit lives 
in his perfect vision and waits for its accomplish¬ 
ment. Now the prophetic gift is the power to 
share God’s vision, entertain his design, behold 
his plan for mankind. And what shall the pro¬ 
phet come to, if he partakes only in the vision of 
the Eternal? Abraham had his vision of a pos¬ 
terity numerous as the stars in the Syrian sky 
under which he pitched his tent, and he died with 
only one son the heir of the vast promise. Moses 
had his vision of a multitude of slaves wrought 
over into a mighty nation, conformed in the 
whole reach of personal, domestic, and civic life 
to the conscience of Jehovah, and he went up into 
Pisgah to die, leaving his people in the plain 


THE PATIENCE OF GOD. 73 

below little better still than a crowd of slaves. 
Isaiah beholds Judah regenerated, her kingdom 
reestablished in righteousness, and Jehovah ad¬ 
ministering the empire of the world through her 
influence, and the inspired statesman was hardly 
in his grave when Judah was swept into captiv¬ 
ity. The apostle beheld a new heaven and a 
new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, and 
after the labor and sorrow of nearly two thou¬ 
sand years men wait for the realization of the 
dream. Unless the prophet shall share equally 
in the vision and the patience of God, he will 
run the earth wild, he will end in despair. 
Wherever one finds the share in the vision 
greater than the participation in the patience of 
the Divine, there one hears the sorrow of the seer, 
the wail of the prophet, the passionate, despairing 
cry of the man of God, “O Lord, how long?” 
The prophetic office of Christian people must be 
pressed to this double participation. Men can 
keep the vision, as the image of the final truth, 
only as they hold in the heart the waiting spirit. 

There is further no insincerity in thinking of 
the joy of beholding while one waits for the hour 
of completed achievement. It was a noble thought 
of Aristotle, although overdone in his hands, that 
the supreme blessedness of the Infinite consisted 
in the absoluteness of his vision, and that the sov¬ 
ereign beatitude of human life was to share in the 
clearest, completest manner, and for the longest 


74 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

time, the Divine outlook. The apostle on Patmos 
could do nothing for the immediate relief of the 
church, but he could behold, and that was much. 
Dante, driven from the Florence of his love, 
could accomplish nothing in the way of carrying 
out the reforms that she so greatly needed; but 
he had his immortal vision to warn, to purify, 
and to exalt him. Shakespeare was unable to 
mend the England of his age. The task was 
altogether beyond his strength. But he could 
mirror in the noblest language the vast movement 
of life that he beheld. He was able to behold 
the tragic movement, to note the inspirations that 
informed it, to mark the mysterious power that 
guided it, to look with awe and pity upon the 
pathetic and tragic path of its advance, and to 
anticipate the mighty issues upon which it was 
sweeping. The active, achieving nature is not 
the whole man; there is the contemplative, the 
beholding side. The greatest of all the beati¬ 
tudes is this: “The pure in heart shall see God .” 1 
Thus, by the assertion of the rights of the contem¬ 
plative mood, by discovering the springs in the 
desert of the actual created by beholding the 
divine, and by sharing in equal proportions both 
in the vision and the patience of God, believers 
are able to resist the spirit of despair that inevi¬ 
tably comes when one looks upon what the world 
should be, and then upon what it is. 

1 Matt. y. 8. 


THE MORALITY FOR MAN. 


75 


These reflections are part of the reserves of the 
spirit with which it is able to resist the mood that 
would deprive the world of what I have termed 
the great commonplace of Christian teaching to¬ 
day, — the amenableness of human society to the 
moral standard of Jesus Christ. The ideal is 
not an impossible one. As matter of fact, the 
conduct and spirit of Christian nations are under 
its stimulus and rebuke. This surely is gain. 
There have been times when the morality of Jesus 
was held to be impossible for ordinary men; and, 
being regarded as impossible, they naturally felt 
absolved from all obligation to try to reproduce 
it in character. These have been times of degen¬ 
eration and even rottenness in the church. Times 
of awakening, of the re-birth of moral faith and 
power, have been invariably attended with confi¬ 
dence in the attainability of a life like Christ’s. 
The first consequence of the career of Jesus was 
the creation of moral faith, the inauguration of 
the new era of self-reverence. And although 
that moral faith and self-reverence have been 
largely lost to the Christian world for long pe¬ 
riods of time, although it is the great merit of 
the Unitarian movement in New England that it 
recovered them, one feels how profoundly Atha¬ 
nasius, when but a youth of twenty, touched and 
laid bare the divine source of this moral reju¬ 
venescence of mankind. “And like as when a 
great king has entered into some large city, and 


76 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


taken up his abode in one of the houses there, 
such a city is at all events held worthy of high 
honor, nor does any enemy or bandit any longer 
descend upon it and subject it; but on the con¬ 
trary it is thought entitled to all care, because 
of the king’s having taken up his residence in a 
single house there: so, too, has it been with the 
Monarch of all. For now that he has come to our 
realm, and taken up his abode in one body among 
his peers, henceforth the whole conspiracy of the 
enemy against mankind is checked, and the corrup¬ 
tion of death which before was prevailing against 
them is done away .” 1 This is the origin of that 
moral self-respect and confidence that have had 
a new birth in the present century. This great 
revival of the moral faith inspired by the Incar¬ 
nation is the first distinct and enormous gain in 
the appreciation of the Person of Christ. There 
has been lodged in the conscience of this century 
a sense of the obligation resting upon the disci¬ 
ple to imitate and reproduce the character of his 
Master. Nothing could be more hopeful for our 
poor race than the hearty acceptance of this high 
faith, than the sincere acknowledgment of this 
obligation. Man then thinks of himself, not as 
a four-footed beast attempting to fly, but as a 
wounded eagle wearied with the struggle against 
fierce storms, and faint because of misfortune, 

1 The Incarnation, Athanasius, ch. ix. 3, 4, translated by A. 
Robertson. 


THE SON SHIP OF JESUS. 


77 


but sure of himself in the boundless upper deep, 
able to look at the sun, and confident of finally 
regaining his lost ascendency. 

The second great gain lies in the representative 
value of Christ Godward. He is the represen¬ 
tative son of God; through him we behold our 
affinity to the Eternal Father, our consubstantia- 
tion with Deity. When one thinks how vast an 
influence the consciousness of his Divine son ship 
had over the life of Jesus, one begins to appreci¬ 
ate the greatness of this gain in modern Christol- 
ogy. The whole significance of the Baptism of 
Jesus lies here. It marks the maturity of his 
consciousness of Divine sonship. Whatever the 
incidents of the dove and the voice may mean, 
whatever outward reality there may lie under 
them, they become finally but symbols of the 
consciousness of sonship to God that there and 
then became so absolute in the Lord. The Bap¬ 
tism viewed in this way explains the Temptation. 
The sense of the filial relation to the Infinite, 
which at that time matured into absolute convic¬ 
tion, carried Jesus triumphantly through his great 
trial. Looking into the Temptation itself, it is 
from first to last an attack upon the conscious¬ 
ness of sonship. If the Tempter can but break 
down or demoralize that, he must win his fight. 
And so the whole strength of Jesus is given to 
the pure assertion of sonship; his task is to keep 
the sense of that inviolate; and his victory is won 


78 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

through the absoluteness of the filial conscious¬ 
ness. If one looks at the Transfiguration, the 
same fact appears. The whole scene has its sig¬ 
nificance as a fresh and overwhelming expression 
of the sense of the filial tie that bound Jesus to 
God. That sense had come to maturity at his 
Baptism, and as a preparation for his Tempta¬ 
tion. Although it has been renewed from day 
to day by communion with his Father, it has 
been worn by the labor and sorrow of his minis¬ 
try, and it needs to come to a second sublimer 
maturity that Christ may come to his cross with 
victorious power. Wherever one looks in the 
life of Jesus, one finds that the source of his sin¬ 
lessness and perfect humanity is his absolute sense 
of divine sonship. His morality is the morality 
of the Son of the Highest; his character has its 
creative centre in this great conviction; his ex¬ 
ample carrries us back to this spring rising in his 
heart where that rests upon the heart of God. 

Now, if the morality of Christ is a creation out 
of his conscious sonship to the Eternal, if the 
ideal that he holds before mankind has its source 
here, if his example is unmeaning until one looks 
at the filial soul behind it, one sees at once that 
only as conscious sonship to God is elicited in 
every man can he become a hopeful or even in¬ 
telligent candidate for the Christian life. The 
consciousness of the indestructible filial relation 
to the Infinite is the condition without which an 


THE SONSHIP OF HUMANITY. 


79 


appreciation of Christian morality is not even 
possible. If, then, the morality of Christ is to be 
made available for the world, the consciousness 
of sonship to God in which Christ lived, and out 
of which his absolute moral example came, must 
be made universal. Maurice has pronounced the 
First Epistle of John to be the best text-book ever 
written on Christian morality; and one finds the 
dominant note of that wonderful composition to 
be “now are we sons of God.” In that letter the 
Incarnation is presented as the Eternal Life in 
the life of Jesus, and the morality of God in 
Christ is pressed upon mankind because “now are 
we sons of God.” I repeat, therefore, that the 
example of Christ has moral significance for man 
solely because man is the child of God. 

According to habits of thought but recently 
broken up, God had only one son. Our race, 
while in an unfilial mood, was not composed of 
the children of the Highest. By nature men 
belong to the animal kingdom; to the kingdom 
of the spirit they belong only by the miracle of 
regeneration and the condescension of the Divine 
adoption. This opinion is no longer preachable 
or credible among thinking men. It is obviously 
inconsistent with Christian theism and Christian 
ethics. If it still lives in the schools, it is utterly 
dead in the great fields of militant Christendom. 
It is the mother of fatalism and despair. It post¬ 
pones all Christian ethical appeal until regenera- 


80 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


tion has taken place, that is, until the animal has 
been made over into a man and a child of God; 
and, as that new creation is the work of the Eter¬ 
nal Spirit, Christian morality has no sphere of 
operation except in the extremely limited com¬ 
munity of believers in their own regeneration. 
The materialism and fatalism underlying the no¬ 
tion of the complete animalism of man, prior to 
the miracle of the new birth, are part of an obso¬ 
lete philosophy that for a long time did duty with 
an equally obsolete theology. One may well re¬ 
joice over the gain that has come in the recogni¬ 
tion of Christ as the elder brother, humanity’s 
mighty representative, the revealer of the tie that 
forever binds every man to the heart of God. It 
was an overdone and suicidal doctrine of deprav¬ 
ity that obscured and ultimately buried out of 
sight this original and imperishable revelation of 
the gospel. That there is the least difficulty 
with this view in reading the New Testament 
cannot for one moment be admitted. The texts 
that speak of our adoption into the family of God 
are explicable upon the simple principle that 
men, although naturally in the relation of sons, 
are not living in accordance with it. They are 
prodigal sons, but still sons. Paul must be stud¬ 
ied in the light of his Master’s great parable; 
the apostle’s meaning must be construed with 
reference to the central truth of the Incarnation; 
his epistles must be enriched, and, if need be, 


CHRIST AND NATURE. 


81 


revised by the gospel. Here, let it be repeated, 
are the two inestimable gains of the church of 
to-day in the intellectual appreciation of Christ. 
First, he is consubstantiated with humanity; and, 
second, by means of the revelation in him, hu¬ 
manity is seen to be consubstantiated with God. 

IV. 

Another great gain, of a widely different char¬ 
acter, in our thought of Christ, must now be 
noticed. It is now becoming clear that the final 
meaning of nature and the character of ultimate 
reality are given through Christ. We live in 
the universe that he has made; our judgments 
of truth and of goodness are but the images of 
his mind and heart; our whole thought of the In¬ 
finite mystery in whose presence we stand has 
been formed under his influence. Man’s view of 
nature is necessarily ant 1 ropomorphic; since the 
advent of Jesus it has been, among all positive 
as opposed to negative thinkers, Christomorphic. 
The full significance of this marvelous suprem¬ 
acy is not as widely seen as it should be. It 
is one of the most impressive of the testimonies 
to the ascendency of Christ over our Western 
world. 

From the beginning, men have struggled to 
know the nature of the world beyond them. For 
a long time they did not see that, when they con¬ 
strued it as matter, they were using their own 


82 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

bodies as interpreter: when they recognized it as 
life, they were looking at it as a mightier exhi¬ 
bition of the life of which they were conscious; 
when they regarded it as force, they were but 
reducing it to the form of the human will. Now 
this conclusion of all sound thinking has behind 
it a profoundly interesting pre-Christian his¬ 
tory. More than four centuries before the begin¬ 
ning of our era, a famous Greek thinker cleared 
away a whole world of clouds from the approach 
to nature. He said, “Man is the measure of all 
things;” it was the distinct assertion that all 
speculation must be in the forms of human 
thought, that man must take himself as the stand¬ 
ard of judgment in all questions of the true, 
and the beautiful, and the good. Like all first 
thoughts, it was conceived in a crude way; like 
every unqualified insight, it was liable to great 
abuse. If man is the measure of all things, it 
was concluded that whatever he thinks must be 
true, whatever he fancies must be beautiful, what¬ 
ever he likes must be good. And the descent is 
swiftly made from the universal to the particular, 
from the grand general term “man” to the spe¬ 
cial, living individual. If man is the measure of 
all things, then whatever any person thinks, and 
fancies, and likes must for him be the true, and 
the beautiful, and the good. But then there may 
be as many thoughts, and fancies, and likes as 
there are human beings; these may all stand in 


THE STANDARD THOUGHT. 83 

a bewildering contradiction; and therefore it fol¬ 
lows that there is no truth, or beauty, or goodness 
apart from the feeling of the individual. A 
truth for all men, a beauty for all, a goodness for 
all, there is not and cannot be. Thus the mag¬ 
nificent insight of Protagoras seems to plunge 
the race into the most helpless subjectivity, into 
absolute skepticism. And yet the thought is for¬ 
ever true that man is the measure of all things. 

Against this famous maxim, and the utter de¬ 
nial of the reality of a universal truth and good¬ 
ness, Plato protested with all the might of his 
exalted genius. He held that God and man are 
at heart kindred; that man is made in the image 
of the Divine; that his mind is thus in the form 
of the Infinite mind. But God’s thought and 
not man’s is the absolute thought, God’s nature 
and not man’s gives the eternal beauty, God’s 
choice and not man’s reveals the immutable 
good. “ Our God is, then, the measure of all 
things ;” 1 and the task of the philosopher is to 
climb up into the Divine outlook, and somehow 
obtain access to the vision, the love, and the 
determination of the Infinite. And this he is 
able to do, because of his participation in the 
Divine nature, — because, as we should say, his 
mind is theomorphic. It is the essential preroga¬ 
tive of philosophic genius, according to Plato, to 
ascend from the mere human outlook, and mea- 
1 The Laws, p. 716. 


84 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


sure truth, beauty, and goodness by the thought, 
and love, and life of the Eternal . 1 

Plato’s protest is magnificent, and this high 
faith in the self-transcendence of human reason 
has held sway over the deepest and noblest minds 
in all these subsequent centuries. Yet something 
still remained to be done, in the way of acute 
and conclusive thinking, before the abuse of the 
maxim, that man is the measure of all things, 
became, among all those who understand the 
problem, a philosophic impossibility. This piece 
of valid and final thinking was done by Aristotle, 
who admitted at once that man is the measure of 
all things. He saw clearly that it is impossible 
for man to think except in terms of his own 
thought, — that all human speculations about the 
universe must be anthropomorphic. But, grant¬ 
ing that man is the measure of all things, the 
decisive question remains to be settled, What 
man? The lunatic, the vicious, the slave of an 
unworthy ambition? Are these our measuring- 
rods ? Or must we not look for the cnrovSaLos avrjp, 
the perfect man, as the standard of all truth, and 
all beauty, and all life ? 2 Here is the high faith 
of Plato brought under definite form, drawn to 
a concrete human issue. God’s thought is still 
the absolute truth; man’s mind, through its kin¬ 
ship with the Divine, is still able to reproduce 

1 The Phaedrus, pp. 244-257. 

2 Ethics, Book III. ch. iv. 4, 5. 


THE PERFECT MAN. 


85 


something of the vision of the Infinite; and the 
perfect man is the prophet of the Highest, the 
standard intellect and heart and will for man¬ 
kind. 

But the next question is one that philosophy 
cannot answer; for it is a question of fact, — 
Where is the perfect man? The philosopher 
may triumphantly declare that, when he shall 
come, he will show us all things. But at the 
date of the philosophic victory he had not ar¬ 
rived. The histories of the Old World, Egyptian, 
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, might be searched, 
and the search would be vain; for no perfect man 
can be found in any or all of these civilizations. 
And it is in the light of reflections like these 
that one learns what the great philosophic apostle 
meant when, in the midst of conflicting minds, he 
declares, “But we have the mind of Christ .” 1 * * * * 6 

Here is the vindication at once of the insight 

1 1 Corinthians ii. 16. This vast and profound chapter of 

ancient thought, without whose mastery one cannot so much as 

find one’s way in modern speculation, may be set forth in the 
four quotations following: 

irdvruv xPVI Ji d Lr(,}V P-erpov dvQpoirov Aval. Man is the measure 

of all things. (Protagoras.) 

6 8)] debs v/Av irdvruv XPVpdruv /xerpov &v An) p.d\i<rra. Our 
God would prove to be supremely the measure of all things. 
(Plato.) 

6 (Tnoubaios yap e/facrro Kp'ivei opdus. The perfect man is the 
perfect judge of all things. (Aristotle.) 

tjjuAs 8e vovv xpurroC exo/xev. But we have the mind of 
Christ. (Paul.) 


86 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

of Protagoras and the philosophic faith of Plato; 
here, too, is the realization in fact of the great 
thought of Aristotle. Man is the measure of 
all things; he becomes a noble measure because 
he is able to reproduce the Divine vision; he is 
the standard of reality when he becomes perfect; 
and the Christ is the perfect man, and there¬ 
fore the revelation of the absolute truth and good¬ 
ness. 

This is the noble chapter of ancient thought 
and historic revelation, stated in the terms of a 
free interpretation. We take up the problem 
where the old thinkers left it. The first step in 
all clear thinking about nature is to recognize 
that all science is necessarily in the forms of 
human thought. As a recent writer puts it, “The 
proposal to avoid anthropomorphism is as absurd 
as the suggestion that we should take an unbiased 
outside view of ourselves by jumping out of our 
skins .” 1 Nature understood is nature put into 
the forms of the human mind. If we are to con¬ 
strue the outward world at all, we must do it 
through the forms of our rational life. The ne¬ 
cessity is laid upon us to interpret the universe 
in terms of reason. Mind and will are behind 
everything, are under everything; so we must 
say if we are to say anything. But just at this 
point the question comes, What sort of mind is 
behind the outward world; what kind of intelli- 
1 Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 145. 


TWO VOICES. 


87 


gence is behind nature; what is the character of 
the will that is under all things ? These are the 
deepest of all questions. And, by all believers in 
God in our Western world, Christ’s intelligence 
and will have been selected as representing the 
Supreme Intelligence and Will. It is in reality 
the reason and heart of Christ that we believe to 
lie behind all things, that we trust as the core of 
the universe. This is a stupendous step to take, 
but it is a step that all believers in the Christian 
God have taken. Ever since Christ came, reli¬ 
gious thinkers have been anxious to show that his 
mind and heart were identical with the creative 
mind and heart; they have turned the anthropo¬ 
morphic view of the universe into the Christomor- 
phic view. Much of our best modern poetry has 
had before it the same high calling. Words¬ 
worth, Shelley, Emerson, Tennyson, and Brown¬ 
ing all glorify nature, all profess to live upon its 
beauty, all behold in it one vast form of the 
Eternal Christ. 

At this point modern science comes upon the 
scene and speaks with two voices. The first voice 
is godless. It tells of nothing but the struggle 
for existence; it declares that heartless self-seek¬ 
ing is the absolute law of the entire animal world 
below man; that the race is always to the swift 
and the battle to the strong; and that, without 
brutal indifference to others, large and long-con¬ 
tinued success for any race of creatures is impos- 


88 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


sible. Nature, according to this view, is but 
another name for the selfish, ruthless, and godless 
march of power. There may be intelligence and 
will behind the cosmic tragedy; but on a stage 
swarming with self-seekers, one set annihilating 
another, and each generation finally wiped out 
by the merciless laws of animal life, there is 
absolutely no hint of love. This is the horrible 
caricature of nature that one finds in much of the 
first-class scientific literature of our century. 

But the second voice of science is beginning to 
control our thoughts. The profounder Christian 
thinkers and the great modern poets were not all 
wrong. There is something divine in nature. 
If in that realm there is a tremendous egoism, 
there is also a predominating altruism; if in that 
sphere there is an incessant struggle for life, 
there is beside it, and controlling it, the struggle 
for the life of others. Without this unselfishness 
that selfishness would defeat itself, and the lower 
animal life of the world would perish in a genera¬ 
tion. To make possible the continuous wrestle 
for life, we must have in nature a parallel devo¬ 
tion to the life of others, an increasing disregard 
for self, an unceasing solicitude for offspring. 
Throughout the animal world we find the amazing 
facts of fatherhood and motherhood, and these 
convert the lion’s den and the tiger’s jungle into 
centres of self-sacrifice. Throughout the empire 
of living creatures, one beholds the parent cher- 


THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS. 


89 


ishing, feeding, and fitting the offspring for the 
battle of life; everywhere one sees a large part 
of the animal kingdom existing mainly for the 
rest. This vast, incessant, and beautiful struggle 
for the life of others, as Professor Drummond 
felicitously terms it, requires interpretation . 1 
What does this living and dying for others mean ? 
Is it not a hint, a foretoken, a dim anticipation 
of Him who gave his life for humanity ? Is it not 
the shadow of his cross lying upon the whole 
domain of creature existence? Is not the univer¬ 
sal and noble passion of parental love the cord by 
which even the brute world is bound to the heart 
of God ? Thus at last, by the hand of science, 
we behold the struggle for the life of others, that 
was the supreme note in the career of Christ, 
carried back through the entire kingdom of brute 
life, traced out beyond space and time, and fol¬ 
lowed up to its seat in the eternal love of God 
for his universe. Nature still remains dark 
enough; the contention is not that the gloom is 
abolished, but that it is relieved. The devour¬ 
ing egoism remains part of the life of the animal 
world. We can see how essential that self-assert¬ 
iveness is to the issues of life. Those who make 
it the sole essential law of all improving exist¬ 
ence should not forget the improvement in which 
it issues, when they come to sit in ethical judg¬ 
ment upon the law. Granted that the necessity 

1 The Ascent of Man, Introduction ii. 


90 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

for the ferocious egoism in animal existence is an 
absolute mystery, the fact that it is a vanishing 
force, and that from the first it is clearly un¬ 
der the ascendency of another force, the altruis¬ 
tic impulse of parenthood pours a flood of light 
through the whole wild process of nature. An 
egoism that is vanishing, that from the first has 
been under the direction of altruism, that, as life 
has risen in value, has fallen into a subordination 
more and more marked, and that, in the thought 
of mankind as the final cause of evolution, sinks 
into the temporary servant and forerunner of an 
ultimate victorious love, may remain as a distress, 
but not as unmitigated or lasting. 

The egoism in nature that appears so opposed 
to a lofty interpretation of its purpose is but the 
counterpart of what we find in human history 
under the name of sin. The employment of an 
excessive individualism in nature, and the per¬ 
mission of irrational selfishness and an evil will 
in humanity, are facts for which the Almighty 
has, without doubt, the highest reason, but thus 
far there has been no revelation of it. But if in 
nature and in humanity the tremendous individ¬ 
ualism, the devouring passion, has from the first 
been under the control of an opposing principle, 
the force of self-sacrifice; and if, further, the vast 
form of egoism both in the animal world and in 
the human is suffering reduction, with the great 
prophecy forever uttering itself of the far-off 


THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 


91 


goal toward which the whole movement is di¬ 
rected, when altruism shall be all in all, — then 
the universe, under both its aspects, is no longer 
incompatible with absolute goodness. Both na¬ 
ture and history may be brought to the highest 
in humanity for interpretation. History has for 
eighteen centuries been made to yield its meaning 
in this way, and at length nature conies to the 
same test. 

Now this interpretation of the higher and final 
significance of nature through Christ is but the 
fresh assertion that we cannot go beyond him. 
Our human universe is a Christian universe. 
The best in nature, the best in human history, 
the best in the hope of the world, is but the 
image of Christ. Thus, so far as we have a God, 
Christ is in very truth our God. We baptize 
the Creative Being behind nature and behind 
human history and life into the name of Christ. 
We do all that we do, when we do our best, in 
the power of Christ. A nature with the hint of 
Christ in it, a humanity capable of putting on the 
form of his love, a universe gathering itself up 
into Christ as its head, — that is our best think¬ 
ing. It may be true or it may be false, but it 
is what we all do when we do our best. We 
have heard recently of certain persons who pre¬ 
tend to have the power of leaving and returning 
to their bodies at will, — of certain disembodied 
spirits sitting on the mantelpiece and taking an 



92 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


outside view of themselves. That is the super¬ 
lative of hallucination. Men are not permitted 
to jump out of their skin, unless they jump for 
good; they are not allowed to take a position 
beyond themselves in order to get an outside 
view. A mirror, or the mind of an honest friend, 
is the nearest they can get to that feat. And in 
the same way, those who think they can transcend 
Christ, and look at this universe as if he had 
never lived, are fooling themselves with the vain¬ 
est imaginations. A view of this universe, even 
an atheistic one, unmodified by Christ, is not 
possible; and for proof I may cite the ethics and 
the mysticism of Positivism. Much less is a 
religious view of the universe possible uncon¬ 
trolled by our Lord. He is the Alpha and 
Omega of all our high thinking, the beginning 
and the end. Our universe, at first anthropomor¬ 
phic, is now Christomorphic. Our civilization is 
the product of Christ. Through the struggle in 
it for the life of others, nature is coming within 
the compass of the cross. The universe, regarded 
from of old as the work of thought, is now held 
to be the work of Christian thought. To affirm 
that our universe is anthropomorphic is to assert 
that God is a human God; to discover that it is 
Christomorphic is to declare that God is a Chris¬ 
tian God. This is the transformation that the 
Pounder of Christianity has wrought in the form 
of human thinking. The best thing that men 


THREE GREAT GAINS. 


93 


can say is, we have the mind of Christ; for the 
intellect, no less than the conscience, he is a 
finality. His encompassing presence, and the 
fact that he conditions the whole working philoso¬ 
phy of the higher mind of mankind, that he domi¬ 
nates the spirit, and supplies the form for our 
ultimate thought of all things, prepare the reason 
for the measureless significance of his Person. 
These reflections do not prove that he is at the 
heart of the universe, hut they do prove that he 
is at the heart of our human universe; they do 
not demonstrate the reality of his absolute ascen¬ 
dency, but they do demonstrate his ascendency 
over mankind. 


V. 

Three great advances have thus been made 
in the intellectual appreciation of the Person of 
Christ. He is the acknowledged representative 
of humanity, the accepted revelation of the essen¬ 
tial kinship of the divine and the human, and the 
guide to the ultimate meaning of nature. The 
morality of the Highest is the morality for man; 
it is so because man is the son of the Highest; 
and nature has its origin in the primal love that 
never fails to guide the whole cosmic process, 
that shines in the altruism that burns brighter 
and brighter against the vanishing ferocity of 
brute existence, and that controls human history 
in the cross of the Master. Beyond this, how- 


94 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

ever, in the thought of to-day, all is dark. That 
there is in Christ any essential otherness from 
mankind, any relationship to the Deity that sets 
him apart from mankind, any attribute in virtue 
of which he is the Eternal Son of God, it is diffi¬ 
cult for many minds in our time to believe. We 
accept from him a doctrine of morality, a concep¬ 
tion of humanity, and a faith in nature; but we 
are still unable to see the richness and essential¬ 
ness of his idea of God. Unless we obtain from 
Christ, in addition to a clue to the meaning of 
nature, an immutable morality, and a conception 
of the divineness of man, a doctrine of God, we 
cannot be said to have mastered the secret of his 
character. His idea of an eternal Fatherhood in 
the Infinite is the heart of the matter.) If we 
can retain that as the deepest reality in the uni¬ 
verse, we have our guide to the interpretation of 
the remaining mystery in the life of Jesus. 

The fundamental defect in current thought 
about Christ is an overdone principle of identity. 
To-day, otherness in Christ to humanity counts 
for nothing. This is indeed a curious intellectual 
mood. It is a pushing of the law of identity to 
the extremest lengths; it is a ruling-out of the 
law of difference in the most radical fashion. 
Now, all knowledge rests upon these two great 
laws of kinship and contrast; and if there be, as 
there most certainly is, a plurality of beings in 
the universe, that plurality must embody the two 


IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE. 95 

fundamental principles of identity and difference. 
Between the object of sense — the flower, the 
tree, or the hill — and the mind that apprehends 
it there must be kinship; otherwise the two could 
not come together: but it is equally clear that 
between them there must be contrast; otherwise 
there could be no subject and object, that is, no 
knowledge. Among human beings there must be 
a vast attribute in common, as this is essential 
to the fact of brotherhood; but there must be 
among them special endowment, in the strictest 
sense, private property, as on any other ground 
individuality or personality would be a myth. 
Through all the ranks of life there must run a 
sublime identity. There is a sense even now in 
which God must be all in all. A qualified but 
magnificent pantheism is involved in the very 
notion of a universe. All things are bound by 
common affinities to one centre; in Him all 
things consist, and all men have their being. 
Historical pantheism, the typical fascinating pan¬ 
theism of Spinoza, is in error only through its 
exclusiveness. The conception of one universal 
substance is true as far as it goes, but it is not 
the whole truth. The strand of difference runs 
throughout creation. As without the identity 
there can be no unity, so without the difference 
there can be no variety and no reality in finite 
existences. If nature is an order, it is an order 
of particular forces; if human history is a unity, 


96 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

there is multiplicity in the unity. As in the 
crowding figures of the saints on some great 
cathedral window there must be the art that 
makes face answer to face in a common rapture 
and aspiration, and the skill that individualizes 
and builds its dreams into distinct and sacredly 
significant personalities, so everywhere through¬ 
out the empire of life the two great principles of 
kinship and contrast must run. All the figures 
upon the blazing glass wear in their faces the 
marks of the Lord, but the faces themselves are 
entirely distinct. We are thus led to the conclu¬ 
sion that upon these two great laws of identity 
and difference all knowledge and all being finally 
rest; and the highest expression in humanity 
of the law of difference is the Person of Jesus 
Christ. 

Against this affirmation the mood to which I 
have referred looks very strange. It appears 
extreme in its onesidedness. If there is complete 
identity between Christ and humanity in respect 
of being and range of powers, men are ready to 
believe on him; but if it is said that there is any 
otherness, any eternal difference between him 
and his brethren, it is felt that that must be a 
metaphysical fiction. Christ gives the possible 
stature of every man, and that we readily ac¬ 
cept; he reveals the point at which every human 
life touches the Eternal Fatherhood, and that we 
willingly believe. But that Jesus should sustain 


PANTHEISM AND ITS PREMISE. 


97 


to God a relation singular, inapproachable, in¬ 
effable, is to-day either denied outright or admit¬ 
ted blindly. 

Now it should be clearly understood that the 
denial of the possible supreme divinity of Jesus 
means the absolute destruction of all individu¬ 
ality. If identity is the sole canon of reality, 
then whatever departures there may be from that 
law in the present constitution of the material 
universe and human life are non-essential for 
being, and therefore of no importance for thought. 
If a particular man is completely understood 
through the concept man; if we have nothing 
more to say of an Aristotle, a Shakespeare, a 
Cromwell, or a Beethoven than that he is com¬ 
prehended under the general notion of mankind; 
if in our sense of truth we are dominated solely by 
the principle of kinship, — we destroy the beau¬ 
tiful individualism of nature, we take no account 
of human genius, we reduce the living world to 
a dead monotony, and sink all particular per¬ 
sons in the gulf of an absolute pantheism. The 
denial of the possible supreme divinity of Jesus 
means nothing less than this. For it proceeds 
upon the supposition that the attributes that men 
have in common are the sole, exclusive reality, 
and that the attributes in which they differ are 
not attributes at all, but the mere accidents of 
existence. If difference is an illusion, there is but 
one being in the universe, and the present phe- 


98 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

nomenal world is but one in the infinite series of 
self-exhibitions that that being is giving of him¬ 
self. The differences of distinct minds and con¬ 
sciences and characters; the contrasts between 
the intellects that behold the truth and those that 
wander in error, between the consciousness that 
is self-approving and the consciousness that is 
self-condemning, — all the antitheses found in the 
varying range of endowment, in the use of power, 
and in the solid fact of an irreducible individual¬ 
ism, must be regarded as a vain show. If the 
individuality of Jesus is of no account, if his 
separateness from sinners means nothing, if his 
genius carries one nowhere, if he is real and sig¬ 
nificant only so far as he participates in a com¬ 
mon nature, then indeed it follows that his su¬ 
preme divinity is a myth; but it turns out also 
that human personality is a myth, that all claim 
to reality on the part of the thinking, feeling, 
and active soul is insane raving. We have put 
the Master to a new and a final death, but in 
doing this we have slain humanity. The pious 
reflection that we go and die with him is super¬ 
fluous, for by the terms of the reasoning we are 
already dead. This is the price that must be 
paid by those who would disprove the singular 
divinity of Jesus. They must imitate the final 
act of Samson, only they must greatly extend the 
scope of it. They must gather into the house 
filled with the hostile conception, crowded with 


THE LAW OF CONTRAST. 


99 


the haughty historic Philistinism, our entire hu¬ 
manity ; and when the pillars whereon that struc¬ 
ture stands are shaken, when that temple of truth 
and peace is pulled to the ground, the only being 
left to mourn our dead race, and to give it burial 
in eternal oblivion, will be the solitary God whose 
solitary show the tragedy is, and whose desolate¬ 
ness one would pity if one could recover distinct 
existence long enough to exercise commiseration/ 

But if we are not ready to aid and abet this 
universal suicide on the part of mankind; if we 
are not quite prepared to empty nature of its 
wonderful variety, and human life of its endless 
differences; if we still hold that fact must be the 
guide of thought, and God’s order the stable 
foundation of all philosophy; if we continue to 
assert the reality and worth of finite beings, — we 
may at least affirm that the unique divinity of 
Jesus is possible. This may be the meaning of 
his individuality, the significance of his transcen¬ 
dence, the root of that mind and character that 
are absolute for mankind. In holding to the 
presence in the living universe of the great law of 
contrast, we keep open the foundation for the 
great historic faith. 

The current moods toward the supreme divinity 
of Jesus I have characterized as those of denial 
and of blindness. What shall be done with the 
negation, and how shall sight be recovered to the 
blind ? Shall one quietly accept the limitations of 


100 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

our generation, and attempt to run one’s thought 
of Christ on the single rail of its far-reaching 
half truth ? Shall one affirm only so far as one 
may anticipate a favorable response, telling the 
souls who wish to go farther, who long for the 
effulgence of the Eternal glory and the impress 
of his substance in human form to become their 
Lord, that nothing remains for them but unwin - 
nowed tradition and blind faith? Or shall one 
take a position just the opposite of that? Shall 
one boldly contend that the historic faith concern¬ 
ing the Person of Christ as the Eternal Son of 
God rests upon the higher reason of mankind, 
and that, although the light is too dazzling to 
admit of utter penetration, one can behold the 
various highways of rational inquiry converging 
upon and terminating in the inaccessible splendor ? 
This seems to me the sound position. Rational¬ 
ism of the right sort is the very life of theology, 
— the rationalism that does not create a universe, 
but that seeks to know the one already here; that 
does not wish to simplify forces and persons out 
of existence; that is here as a learner and thinker, 
and not in the role of a creator; that keeps its 
vision upon the divine fact; that waits at its prob¬ 
lem with the patience inspired by the conscious¬ 
ness of the endless life, and by the sense that its 
problem is the problem of humanity. The faith 
in the Trinity rests upon reason at work upon 
historic fact. The doctrine was a construction 


THE TRINITY. 


101 


of the mind of the early Christian centuries, the 
product of metaphysical genius unequaled in the 
history of the church; and if to-day the great 
conception is coming up for re-discussion and 
further development, it is because that concep¬ 
tion is fundamental not only to the Christian 
faith, but also to the humanity that believes in 
itself as made in the image of God. Whatever 
else the idea of the Trinity implies, it certainly 
means that being and knowledge and love, exist¬ 
ence and intelligence and character, are realities 
in God; and that the various fundamental forms 
of society in the earth, the. essential relationships 
of humanity, have their Archetype, their Eternal 
Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of the 
Infinite. Our business now, however, is not with 
this high theme, but with various lines of sugges¬ 
tion in support of the grand historic tradition con¬ 
cerning Christ. Still, as the significance of the 
difference in Jesus to mankind depends upon the 
difference that one may discover in God, a section 
of this discussion must be given to that vast sub- 

j ect - VL 

Faith exults in our time over the kinship which 
it beholds between God and man, and well it 
may. -*An essential community of being between 
divinity and humanity is the great postulate of a 
reasonable religion. All knowledge of God, all 
profound trust, and all intelligent worship must 


102 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


depend upon the assumption that men are the 
children of the Infinite. Because men feel that 
they are within the community of the Divine 
Life, they are sure that the knowledge of God is 
possible; also absolute trust in his character, and 
the exultant worship of his perfection. Out of 
this feeling of kinship with the Eternal is at 
length elaborated the great belief in his Person¬ 
ality: from this fundamental life of the religious 
spirit the thought at last takes distinct shape that 
God must answer to man; that he must be self-con¬ 
scious and self-determining; that his nature must 
be aware of itself, and must be its own guide. 
This truth, that at heart the divine and the human 
are one, has taken tremendous hold of this cen¬ 
tury. Believers feel that the very existence of 
religion, and the whole rational appeal of Chris¬ 
tianity, depend upon this radical affinity between 
the finite spirit and the Infinite. They go far¬ 
ther. They contend that without this assumption 
there can be no knowledge of the real world, no 
science and no philosophy. The life of science 
and philosophy and faith is sustained by the con¬ 
viction that men are in the presence of a real 
universe; that at heart it is akin to themselves, 
and may therefore be known and served and 
trusted. There is reason nowhere unless there 
is reason everywhere. 

This great truth, upon which depend all the 
higher interests of mankind, must be held at 


COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTIONS. 103 


whatever cost; but there must be added to it that 
of the infinite contrast between the human mind 
and the Mind that rules the universe. The two 
conceptions are complementary; taken singly, 
each is but a suicidal half truth. The principle 
of identity, carried through the universe as its sole 
law, sinks everything in the abysses of an abso¬ 
lute pantheism; the principle of differences pushed 
to extremes gives us an atomic world where 
knowledge and morality are impossible, and where 
even life must be unconscious and blind. It 
would be the easiest thing in the world to show 
the danger of admitting into our conception of 
God a fundamental law of contrast. Use this 
idea by itself, and we shall have the metaphysics 
of materialism, the ethics of pure individualism, 
and the religion of despair; use it exclusively, 
and we shall have a God utterly transcendent, 
between whom and humanity there must remain 
a great gulf fixed. It may seem to many a most 
fatal admission for a writer to make. Does it 
not follow that the more of contrast to man that 
one believes to exist in God, the farther must He 
recede from human interest and hope ? This 
must follow if He is not at one and the same time 
the immanent and transcendent, the infinitely 
near and the infinitely far; it will be inevitable 
if we fail to qualify the idea of contrast with the 
equally essential idea of kinship. 

One may, however, take for granted that, in 


104 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


the reigning religious thought of the present, the 
principle of identity is not in danger of being 
underestimated. It is the other half of the truth 
before which men hesitate and deny. It is gen¬ 
erally supposed by a large body of influential 
writers that the very idea of a universe excludes 
all radical contrast from the nature of things, 
and that the existence of a reasonable religion 
like Christianity carries with it the complete 
identity of the divine and the human. How little 
basis there is for this sweeping and perilous gen¬ 
eralization, I now propose to show by a rapid 
consideration of that which is fundamental in the 
faith of all Christians, the personality of God. 
Without attempting the definition of personality 
in the case either of man or his Maker, there are 
certain attributes of personality, universally rec¬ 
ognized as such among those who believe in it, 
which will be our guide in the examination. 

Man is aware of his own life; he is a self-con¬ 
scious being. God is aware of his life; he is 
a self-conscious Being. Here the finite and the 
Infinite are at one. But man’s consciousness is 
limited and exclusive: he knows himself and the 
world and God truly, but only in part; he col¬ 
lects in himself no more than the merest aspects 
of the great triple reality of the soul and nature 
and their Creator. Not only is his consciousness 
limited; it is also exclusive. The final secret of 
thing-hood and creature-hood, and the life of his 


THE DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS. 


105 


brethren, is hidden from him, and the core of his 
existence is concealed from them. Man’s con¬ 
sciousness is like an inland sea; the sea is largely 
exclusive, shut in from the full power of ocean 
movements, and with access embarrassed to the 
tides from without. It is also limited; it touches 
the earth beneath and the shores around it, and 
it looks up into the heaven above it. It is in 
communion with all things beneath and about 
and above it, and yet the communion is not open; 
it is rigidly and eternally confined. Here is the 
image of the consciousness of man, unable to re¬ 
veal its own secret, and unable to compass the 
secret of other hearts. Man touches the brute 
worlds beneath him, he stands in fellowship with 
the human worlds around him, he looks up into 
the divine worlds above him. He is in a real, in¬ 
disputable communion with all things; yet the 
distinctive note of his consciousness is its limita¬ 
tion and exclusiveness. Now, if one believes at 
all in the Divine consciousness, one sees instantly 
how infinitely different it must be at this point. 
All things are in God, and yet are not to be con¬ 
founded with God. All things, all creatures, 
and in a true sense all persons, must be modes of 
his boundless and inclusive consciousness. God’s 
omniscience implies access to the heart of every¬ 
thing, — implies that all finite existences are trans¬ 
parent to his thought, that they are all and 
uttet-ly within the compass of his mind. One 


106 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

cannot shut the atmosphere from one’s home; it 
comes in through walls of every thickness. It 
goes down through land and sea, it passes through 
the heart of the earth, and, like an omnipresent 
intelligence, encompasses and searches the whole 
globe. Thus the Divine consciousness includes 
all things, and sees through all things. I repeat 
that all things, all creatures, and all persons are, 
in a true sense, modes of the one Infinite con¬ 
sciousness. And here one may feel the entire 
credibility of the Trinity, if historically revealed. 
The consciousness of God carries in it a radical 
and an eternal contrast to that of man. It has 
millions and millions of modes, which are yet 
more than modes, which are persons. They are 
part of it, and yet are distinct from it. Why 
should there not be three Eternal Distinctions 
behind all these multitudinous temporal distinc¬ 
tions? In the nature of the case, what reason is 
there against the reality of an eternal threefold 
form in the Godhead, —the Father and the Son 
and the Holy Spirit, the Life and the Light and 
the Love that have been one from everlasting? 
One cannot judge wholly of the psychology of 
God from the psychology of man. History, as 
the process of the self-revelation of the Infinite, 
must be brought into court. If that shall give 
its authority for the Trinitarian conception of the 
Deity, there can be no rational objection to it 
from the consciousness that is finite. Contrast 


UNITY OF MENTAL LIFE. 


107 


there must be between the intelligence that is 
limited and exclusive and the Intelligence that 
is boundless and inclusive. That contrast may 
include the socialism in the Deity which is the 
ground of humanity in the earth. 

Another great attribute of personality is unity 
of mental life. Men commonly think of person¬ 
ality through this function of it. It means a 
force and a result, a builder and a fair structure 
of knowledge. It signifies that impressions of 
the outward world, all memories and imagina¬ 
tions, all insights and thoughts, are compacted, 
organized into one whole. Oftener than anything 
else, even in the thought of exhaustive thinkers, 
personality means the presence and the work in 
knowledge of the unifying spirit. But in man 
this unity is only potential; it is never actual. 
Our sense-impressions are never all collected; 
they are constantly falling from the overcrowded 
mind, as the fine sand escapes from the over¬ 
crowded hand. They wait at the doors of the 
five senses in endless lines, and, fast as one may 
think, swift as may be the mental admission given 
to sensations, one is never able perceptibly to 
diminish the length of the line. The Infinite 
waits upon the senses for a mental ticket-of-leave 
to enter, and it must wait forever. The number 
of sensations uncollected, unorganized, unnoticed, 
lost, is simply countless. Even in the sphere of 
sense, man moves among worlds unrealized, and 


108 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


the unity of his mental life on its sensuous side 
is but an ideal. When one passes within the 
smaller compass of memory, one finds the same 
thing. Here, likewise, the mental life is too vast 
to be completely marshaled. Round the memories 
that one can recall, circling the definite intellec¬ 
tual life that one can reproduce, is the horizon 
where, in vast clouds, fearful and beautiful, rest 
immense masses of past experience. They are 
lying there in lurid or splendid haze, terrible as 
a thunder-cloud, gorgeous as an autumnal sunset, 
part of one’s being, yet too far off to be com¬ 
manded, too vast to be comprehended. The same 
line of remark holds equally true of one’s imagi¬ 
nations. In the common mind, they are like the 
veering uncertain wind; in the intellect of genius, 
they are like a dance of stars. What unity they 
have is a mystery, and the idea of putting the 
total under mental review is a vain dream. And 
so of our flashes of insight and of our elaborated 
thoughts. One can never bring them all to¬ 
gether, or work them into a complete living, self- 
conscious whole. Men are perpetually escaping 
and going beyond themselves; they run out, in 
the uncomprehended fullness of life, into the Infi¬ 
nite. The mental life of the best-trained man is 
like a piece of cloth splendidly woven at the cen¬ 
tre, but loose on both sides and at both ends. At 
the centre the spirit weaves the beautiful fabric of 
thought, knits it well, and holds it fast; but the 


ACTIVITY AND PERSONALITY . 109 

sides and the ends are always raveled. The per¬ 
sonality of man, or that aspect of it which means 
the unity of his whole psychic life, is but a pro¬ 
phecy. In God, the unity which we look for in 
vain in the human soul is alone found. God’s 
total history, his total thought, must be self-com¬ 
prehending. He is infinite and at the same time 
absolutely self-containing The greatness of this 
contrast is evident enough. The value of it for 
a complete doctrine of God is not now the consid¬ 
eration that I would press. I wish to emphasize 
the fact that in the very centre of the identity 
between God and man, in the wondrous unity 
implied in intellectual life, the difference is infi¬ 
nite. It is the difference between prophecy and 
the realization, the imperfect and the perfect. 

This difference between the personality of God 
and of man is even more impressive when one 
considers it under its moral aspect. For, after 
all, moral unity is the heart of personality. And 
here surely personality is hardly to be found 
among men. They are a kingdom in a state of 
civil war, a continent that is the theatre of hosts 
of contending armies. The counter-movements 
of desire, the terrible rush and roar where the 
opposing seas of passion meet, the battle among 
one’s thoughts of truth, the conflict among one’s 
divinations of right, and the yet more fatal dual¬ 
ism between what one is and what one knows one 
should be, reduce moral personality to a faith 


110 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

and a daring hope. Where in this wild life is 
actual moral personality? Where is the com¬ 
plete organization of thought and purpose and 
passion and endeavor that one must have in a 
perfect personality ? Both in its intellectual and 
moral meaning, and as standing for the unity and 
self-consistency of life, personality is in man only 
potential. He has the sublime capacity for it, 
and his task is the realization of the capacity. 
Man’s world is still in process of building, and 
the confusion is great; and, when from this con¬ 
fusion in the human soul one lifts one’s vision to 
the moral order of the Divine Life, one is over¬ 
whelmed as in the presence of an eternal contrast. 
There one sees the absolute truth, the absolute 
right, and the absolute love; the thought is all 
true, the conscience forever clear and final, the 
love eternally pure. The mental and moral move¬ 
ment is self-consistent, self-comprehending, entire 
and eternal. The personality of God is the only 
complete personality in the universe, and here 
again one beholds the contrast between the human 
and the Divine. As Lotze says in his profound 
discussion, “perfect personality is in God only: 
to all finite minds there is allotted but a pale 
copy thereof; the finiteness of the finite is not a 
producing condition of this personality, but a limit 
and a hindrance of its development .” 1 

Activity is another attribute of personality, 
1 Microcosmus, Book IX. ch. iv. p. 688. 


MAN LOCAL: GOB UNIVERSAL. Ill 


and it clearly belongs both to man and his Maker; 
but once more, in the heart of another identity, 
we come upon a fundamental difference. Man is 
a local being, provincial by his very nature. He 
can act only through a moment of time and at a 
point in space. Make the sphere of his self- 
revealing activity as large as one may, still he 
remains chained to particular times and places. 
One realizes impressively one’s weakness and lo¬ 
calism when one is at sea. There is the heaving 
and unmeasured deep beneath him, and sweeping 
away on every side. Our Creator has sent us on a 
mightier voyage, has put us under the sublimest 
appeal to imagination in the very situation of 
human life. Our planet carries man in its vast 
circuit about the sun, bears him onward in an 
endless voyage, sweeps on through whole seasons 
of tumult in the aerial deep, drives forward 
through the glory of daybreak and the splendors 
of sundown, gives an outlook to right and left and 
overhead into the shining abysses of infinite space, 
and, through every variety of impressive experi¬ 
ence in its magnificent flight, subjects him to the 
feeling of his weakness and provincialism. He is 
the child of God, but he is chained to particu¬ 
lar times and seasons. But the movements of 
the worlds of life beneath man, the vast current 
of human history, the courses of the stars, the 
simultaneous and universal march of nature and 
spirit, is but the expression of the omnipresent 


112 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


Will. In the philosophy of faith one must not 
forget the localism of man and the universalism 
of God. 

We have thus traced a few of the phases of that 
infinite difference which the Eternal must ever 
present to mankind. We have found these within 
the holy circles of community, in the august cen¬ 
tre of personality itself. Personality implies both 
in God and in man self-consciousness, mental and 
moral unity, and self-determination, that is, a 
being in the revelation of its power; but in con¬ 
sciousness, in integrity, and in activity we have 
beheld infinite contrasts. Man is not the mea¬ 
sure of God; God is the eternal standard and 
goal for man, and, while he strengthens himself 
in his kinship to his Creator, he must not forget 
that the whole significance and task of his exist¬ 
ence are developed in the presence of the infinite 
contrast between the perfect and the imperfect . 1 

VII. 

The supreme divinity of Jesus Christ is but 
the sovereign expression in human history of the 
great law of difference in identity that runs 

1 “For we must of necessity hold that there is something 
exceptional and worthy of God which does not admit of any 
comparison at all, not merely in things, but which cannot even 
he conceived by thought or discovered by perception, so that a 
human mind should be able to apprehend how the unbegotten 
God is made the Father of the only begotten Son.” Origen, 
De Principiis, Book I. chap. ii. 4. 


NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF GOD. 113 

through the entire universe, and that has its home 
in the heart of the Godhead. With this law in 
our thought, we dare to look into the New Testa¬ 
ment conception of God as the Father and the 
Son and the Holy Spirit. In Him we find eter¬ 
nally existing the Paternal, the Filial, and the 
Union of these two. Here are the differences in 
the ineffable community of the Godhead. Is it 
not conceivable that the Filial in God should have 
been in union with Jesus in a way unparalleled 
and inapproachable ? Surely it is thinkable and 
credible that, in consequence of his mission and 
relation to the world, the Deity might have been 
the basis of Christ’s being in a manner utterly 
singular, and that, along with the kinship between 
him and us, there might be an eternal contrast. 
The universe is the work of God. It is not for 
us to say what shall be the character of creation; 
we must take reality as we find it, and reverently 
seek for insight into its mystic depths. The 
claim, that in Jesus there is a union with God 
absolutely unique, is at least conceivably sound 
and true. The claim cannot be disposed of with¬ 
out consideration, it cannot be dismissed prior to 
examination of the fact. Jesus Christ is a fact 
too transcendent to be accommodated to the re¬ 
quirements of a given philosophy. The scheme 
that is to prevail, that is not doomed to a disas¬ 
trous collision with reality, must grow out of the 
historic truth. The man who comes forward 


114 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

with a programme in his hand, according to which 
the universe must be ordered, is too ambitious. 
His task is too great for him. He is usurping the 
place of creative wisdom. The universe is already 
here, ordered in terms of the Eternal Reason; 
and history is already here, and its evolution of 
the character of the Ultimate Life, and man’s 
duty is to follow the path of the great revelation. 
The assertion that Christ cannot be very God of 
very God, in a sense infinitely beyond what may 
be truthfully said of all other human beings, is 
sheer intellectual presumption, is indeed dogma¬ 
tism of the worst kind. 

Our great faith in the unique divinity of Jesus 
is then possibly true. We have got as far as to 
say that the fact may be as we believe. Can we 
take another step forward? Let us at least make 
the attempt. A man should go courageously 
wherever his instinct and surmise of truth lead. 
Some one asked a brave soldier, who stood for 
absolute loyalty to his commander under all cir¬ 
cumstances, if he would run against a wall under 
orders, and his reply was that he assuredly would. 
There are different kinds of walls, and a brave 
man under the passion of duty may be able to run 
through a troop and jump over a wall; he may 
also find that the obstacle is only imaginary, and 
that the charge upon it reveals its insubstantial 
character, v One must follow his surmise of truth: 
the dog has his scent of the game, and man has 


THE ETERNAL HUM/iNITY. 115 

his divination of fact; neither can ignore without 
inevitable failure that discerning, insistent, ulti¬ 
mate impulse. V 

All religious philosophy will admit that in God 
there is the Eternal Prototype of humanity. All 
intelligent religious thinking must recognize in 
the Deity an eternal basis for the nature, the ad¬ 
vent, the career and ideal, of mankind. What 
possible interest can human beings have in the 
Infinite if society is not organized out of his life, 
if He is not the ground of its order and hope? 
What do we mean by the Being in whom every 
fatherhood in heaven and in earth is named, if 
our God is not a fullness of love, if He is not in 
his inmost nature an eternal society? Is there 
anything in the Infinite to account for humanity? 
That is the deepest question in religious philoso¬ 
phy, and thinkers are everywhere converging upon 
the conclusion that in God there is the Eternal 
Pattern of our race. And what is this Eternal 
Pattern, or Prototype, but the Son of Man of 
the synoptic gospels, the Only-begotten of the 
Fourth Gospel, the Mediator of the Pauline Epis¬ 
tles, the High Priest without descent, with nei¬ 
ther beginning of days nor end of years, of the 
letter to the Hebrews, the God of God, Light of 
Light, begotten, not made, of the Nicene Creed, 
who for us men and our salvation came down, was 
made flesh, and became man? Granted that in all 
these phrases there is an effort to express the in- 


116 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

expressible, a framing of words to set witliin def¬ 
inite forms the unbounded and ineffable; granted 
that the terms are but symbolic in their force, that 
they but hint at the whole unutterable truth, — 
the question comes, Is there an infinite reality 
behind the human symbol ; is the mental effort 
and result a trustworthy witness to the trans¬ 
cendent and eternal fact ? That question all reli¬ 
gious philosophy that is not serving as its own 
undertaker must answer in the affirmative. And 
the point in Christology for the faith of to-day to 
master, the centre round which the whole conflict 
of opinion is raging, is the special, unique rela¬ 
tion of Jesus Christ to this Eternal Prototype of 
humanity in the Godhead. Here is where we are 
pressed by the strong Unitarian thinker; here is 
where little has been done, in the form of definite 
and conclusive thinking, to arrest his onward 
march. And, while the liberal hosts are press¬ 
ing forward, the orthodox warriors are puzzled. 
Surrender they never will; the vital interests that 
are still renewed out of the bosom of Christ 
make that catastrophe impossible. But they see 
no way open at present by which their conviction 
of the transcendent relation of Christ to God can 
be pushed into the invincible form of reason. 
Thus we see our difficulty; we are sensible of our 
embarrassment; we recognize our problem, and 
that is more than half the battle. The great 
point, then, to be determined concerning Jesus is, 


ACTUAL AND IDEAL SONSHIP. 117 

whether he is the supreme and unique represent¬ 
ative of the humanity of God, the proper incar¬ 
nation of the Filial in the being of the Infinite? 

Conviction upon this point can result only from 
serious study of the character of Jesus. In the 
next section of this discussion the attempt will be 
made to indicate the ground upon which such a 
conviction may be founded. Here, however, let 
it be remarked that, as we study Jesus in the free¬ 
dom and homage of true science, we come upon 
the august fact that so penetrated the mind of 
Horace Bushnell, and to which he has given an 
expression so simple and magnificent, the unclas- 
sifiable character of Christ. Reason has no place 
for him in the purely human categories, unless 
these are made the forms for an ideal humanity. 
If our human categories are the conceptions that 
cover actual human existence, Christ’s being fills 
and transcends them; he is all that they require, 
and infinitely more. They make room for sin, 
and moral ignorance, and ethical limitation in 
every direction, and the general sore embarrass¬ 
ment to which all human beings are subject. 
They make no room for complete holiness, abso¬ 
lute knowledge of moral obligation, utter ethical 
integrity, and the freedom of the perfect Son of 
God. The prophetism of Jesus; his goodness, 
and his power as director of our whole higher civ¬ 
ilization; his thought, his character, his author¬ 
ity, — cannot be put, without doing violence to 


118 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

fact, in the same category with those of any other 
leader of mankind. There is in the Founder of 
the Christian religion a recognizable, a demonstra¬ 
ble transcendence of the actual human category. 
He is concerned with the Deity, implicated in 
his nature, associated with his purpose, under his 
will and spirit, in a manner secret, inapproach¬ 
able, ineffable. This singularity of Christ is un¬ 
mistakable in the Gospels, conspicuous in the 
Epistles, and conclusively evident over the whole 
field of more than eighteen hundred years of 
Christian experience and history. The form of 
the Son of Man is an eternal contrast, set in with 
immortal identities, to all his brethren. For the 
sake of the identities we must hold to the con¬ 
trast. This singularity of Christ is the thing to 
be noted to-day; this assurance of union between 
God and humanity from the Christ who repre¬ 
sents that union by the authority of a relation 
aboriginal and ineffable; this pledge of salvation, 
victorious evolution, or whatever name may be 
assigned it, from the Life that is human, and at 
the same time carries into history the secret of 
the Eternal Mind. This singularity of our Lord 
must be saved for the sake of the community with 
mankind that rests upon it. For I believe that 
only as we grasp the transcendent relation which 
Christ sustains to God can we retain for any 
length of time, and in effective living form, the 
other mighty insights that faith has won through 


PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY. 


119 


Him. Philosophy working upon history is to-day 
able to reach results similar to those revealed 
through the Person of Christ; but the fact must 
never be overlooked that philosophy did not origi¬ 
nate the mighty truths that make us men. These 
truths were made known to our race by a vital 
process; they were brought forth by the sore tra¬ 
vail of history. And philosophy must always be 
tried at the bar of history; the grand integrity of 
the historic reality must never be surrendered to 
an imperious speculative scheme. Lose out of 
faith the sense of the Eternal in Christ, fail to 
recognize in Him the presence of the Absolute, 
miss the fact that his nature is rooted in the 
Deity and is part of the nature of God, and we 
let go the sole adequate support for belief in the 
consubstantiation of humanity with divinity, and 
the consciousness that Jesus is the moral ideal 
for mankind. The Christ who embodies the deep¬ 
est in God, who incarnates the Eternal Filial 
in the Infinite, is essential to hold for the world 
the great convictions of the kinship between man 
and his Maker, and the presence in Jesus of the 
true and final standard of human life. If the 
difference in Christ to humanity is the difference 
of the very God, then we can believe that the 
identity in Christ to our race is the identity of 
the very God. But if the contrast in the Lord 
to mankind does not reach to the being of God, 
if it is not the manifestation of the Eternal, if it 


120 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


is only individual idiosyncracy, the mere separate, 
high - colored envelope in which his humanity 
comes into the world and preserves its secrets 
from the vulgar crowd with whom it must be 
thrown together, then it follows inevitably that 
the kinship of Christ to his brethren does not 
carry us to the heart of the universe, does not go 
beyond the bounds of space and time. Only a 
Christ whose antithesis to humanity means the 
presence of the very God can by his union with 
humanity assure us of union with God. Discredit 
the infinite difference, and we must doubt the 
sublime identity. This contention will be self- 
evident to those who see that we owe our faith in 
the humanity of God and in the divinity of man, 
*not primarily to philosophy, but to the power of 
the historic process. Revelation is ever through 
life, the apprehension of the Infinite Personality 
through the finite; philosophy comes afterwards 
and finds her task. If we take Christ out of the 
historic process of revelation, we decapitate faith 
in the humanness of God and the divineness of 
man. We must remember the rock whence our 
belief was hewn, the pit whence it was dug. It 
was not in the world prior to Christ except in 
the form of intermittent prophetic dream, limited 
religious intuition, or vague, ineffectual philo¬ 
sophic fancy. It was not here as the ruling force 
in human civilization. The consubstantiation of 
man with God is the accepted and moulding 


THE BASIS OF FAITH. 


121 


belief of Christendom to-day because of the reve¬ 
lation of the nature both of God and man made 
through Jesus Christ. Our whole higher faith is 
based upon the conviction that, inasmuch as the 
contrast in him to mankind means the contrast 
of the Absolute, the kinship in him to our race 
signifies the kinship of the Absolute. The his¬ 
toric process to which we owe our working and 
effectual faith may be said to consummate its 
service to the human spirit in the great declara¬ 
tion that the difference of Christ to mankind is 
the difference of God, and the identity of Christ 
to our race is the identity of God. When we 
ascend into the being of the Infinite upon the 
difference, we can with confidence descend into 
humanity upon the identity. 

Once more let the question be put, Upon what 
do we build our belief in the essential correspond¬ 
ence between the Divine and the human? Is it 
a mere venturesome dream and nothing more? 
Is it a deduction from the anthropomorphism es¬ 
sential to human thought in all its forms? Is it 
an intuition into the moral worth of the soul in re¬ 
lation to the moral order of the universe ? These 
all have much to do with it. The venturesome 
dream, the moral intuition, and the philosophical 
deduction have all been concerned in the history 
of the faith. But the faith acquired consistency 
and authority only through Christ; he found it 
but a vague and powerless conception, he left a 


122 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 


fundamental certainty. I believe that the con¬ 
ception that man is the child of the Infinite will 
have the saddest fortune, and indeed remain in 
utter impotence, unless the Prototype of humanity 
lying eternally in the Godhead shall appear in 
an historic personality to vindicate the daring 
thought. The dream, intuition, philosophical de¬ 
duction, or whatever name one may give it, has 
never been able, and it is hard to see that it can 
ever be able, apart from the high appreciation of 
the historic Christ, to support for any length of 
time, on a wide scale and under forms of control¬ 
ling influence, faith in the essential sonship of all 
men to God, and in the obligation resting upon 
human beings here and now to live the transcend¬ 
ent life. Without philosophy, history lies in con¬ 
fusion; and without history, philosophy is insane. 
The Incarnation is the assertion of the divine 
meaning of history, and the vindication of the 
high calling of philosophy; but history and phi¬ 
losophy in denial of the Eternal Christ lose all 
high seriousness, and become little more than 
“sound and fury.” 


VIII. 

The path to this eternal contrast between 
Christ and all the other sons of God is his per¬ 
fect humanity. There is in Christ the note of 
moral completeness, and the root of this must be 
his unique relation to the Deity. There is, indeed, 


TRANSCENDENCE OF MIND. 


123 


a transcendence in the very nature of man, and 
here again Christ differentiates himself from 
humanity out of the heart of a great identity. 
Man’s intelligence is supernatural in its origin. 
Heredity and environment can do much, but they 
cannot originate mind. The impressiveness of 
genius, descending, as it so often does, from a 
poor parentage, and rising up amid the least 
stimulating surroundings, is overpowering from 
this point of view. One might be tempted to 
believe that mind is wholly the product of hered¬ 
ity and circumstances, were it not for the reve¬ 
lation which genius makes, when it starts up in 
full splendor, amid the darkest conditions. -+ One 
looks at Abraham Lincoln, and one sees that his 
intellectual power cannot be accounted for by 
simply regarding him as the child of his mother, 
the son of his father, and the product of his cir¬ 
cumstances. These in no way account for the 
man: they contradict at all points the character 
of the phenomenon; they make it impossible for 
the impartial historian to believe that such a 
mind should have come from such a source. One 
of the first statesmen of the nineteenth century, 
and one of the wisest and strongest rulers that 
ever shaped the destinies of a great people, has in 
his parentage and circumstances absolutely no¬ 
thing to account for his intellectual power. The 
same is true of many another man of genius. 
Robert Burns had an eminently respectable an- 


124 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

cestry, but one looks in vain in it for any hint of 
the poet’s gifts. Those eyes that saw into the 
world’s heart, and that read with unerring vision 
and sympathetic passion the great secrets of hu¬ 
man love, and that voice which set them to the 
music of words that will ring down the groves of 
time to their farthest limit, carry one into the su¬ 
pernatural for their explanation. It must never 
be forgotten that Shakespeare was the son of a 
very humble father. The greatest genius of the 
modern world had his birth in little Stratford-on- 
Avon, and again it is simple mockery to try to 
account for him upon the naked principles of 
heredity and environment. Such an explanation 
is an insult to the common sense of mankind. 
Thus the greatest service of genius, appearing as 
the child of lowly parentage and amid humble 
circumstances, is the proclamation of its high 
origin in the eternal world. It becomes, in the 
second place, a revelation of the source of our 
common humanity in the same supersensible 
realm. By its grand antithesis to ordinary hu¬ 
man endowment, genius is strong enough to show 
its own origin, and the origin of its humbler 
brethren, in the wisdom of God. Genius is 
rooted in a vast identity with common men; but 
out of the heart of this kinship grows a difference 
equally vast and irreducible 
A The same line of remark applies to the distinc¬ 
tion of sainthood. The old question returns, 


LIMIT OF ENVIRONMENT. 125 

Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? No; 
it is impossible. Environment cannot originate 
goodness; at its best, environment is but the con¬ 
dition of character, it can never produce it. The 
great effort to-day all over the civilized world is 
after a purified, a transformed environment, and 
with that endeavor every noble man must be in 
deepest sympathy. By all means let us seek 
beautiful homes for our fellow-men who are doing 
so much of the hardest and most essential work 
of the world, and let us surround them with the 
best possible physical, intellectual, moral, and 
political conditions. Let us have the noblest 
domestic economy, the finest schools, the wisest 
and strongest government, the forms of industrial 
life that are the nearest practicable approach to 
fairness, and let us everywhere strengthen the 
moral and spiritual power of the church. Hu¬ 
manity has had odds against its intelligence and 
virtue far too long; the sea has been too stormy 
for the craft that has had to weather it. A great 
deal more can be done to soften the conditions of 
human existence than even our noblest dreams 
imply, and still the race have enough left of re¬ 
sisting residuum for the development of the moral 
life. It is not the gospel of an improved environ¬ 
ment that one fears: it is the irrational hope that 
grows up under its protection. *Environment, at 
its best, cannot create love.-* Goodness is, again, 
supersensuous and divine in its origin. Nothing 


126 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

good can come out of Nazareth even when con¬ 
formed to the character of the city of God. 
^Goodness must come, if it is to come at all, out 
of the personal will in surrender to the Eternal 
Will, out of the finite soul in the struggle inspired 
and supported by the Infinite Soul. The first 
service of sainthood is that it proclaims its own 
transcendence; it is not of this world. Its second 
service is that it shows that all moral life is tran¬ 
scendent. Goodness is born out of the Infinite 
through the choice and love and victorious strug¬ 
gle of the faithful human spirit. All intelli¬ 
gence and all high character are transcendent, 
and have their source in the mind and heart of 
God.* 

Now it is in the range of Christ’s transcendence 
of his earthly conditions that we note the com¬ 
plete uniqueness of his Person. The mere fact 
of the transcendence of earthly conditions joins 
him to the race of which he is the perfect speci¬ 
men ; the extent and character of this transcend¬ 
ence call for a deeper origin in God for him 
than for the rest of mankind. We speak of the 
difference that he presents to all other men as 
being simply one of degree, and we are thus mis¬ 
led by a word. All real difference is a differ¬ 
ence in kind; the tests of more and less do not 
cover the case. The fact is, they are qualitative 
as well as quantitative. The given quantity and 
the specified quality are unlike, are different, and 


CHRISTS TRANSCENDENCY. 


127 


the difference is real. It is a question of posses¬ 
sion and non-possession. The stone that weighs 
a ton has weight, but it has not the weight of the 
stone of one hundred tons. The difference is an 
ultimate fact, and all real difference is a differ¬ 
ence in kind. One thing possesses it, and an¬ 
other does not; one person has it, while another 
is without it. “Likeness ” is a word for the bond 
of union between the unlike, and “difference” is 
a term for the absolute individuality of beings 
that are forever akin. There are two laws in 
creation, two in the nature of God, and the dif¬ 
ference in the universe, wherever it is real, is as 
important as the identity. We cannot maintain 
the world in which we live, we shall destroy its 
fair order, unless we combine both in thought 
and in activity the two eternal principles of kin¬ 
ship and contrast. And thus we are brought 
back to the Christ who is one with all men and 
yet different. His transcendence, while it reveals 
the transcendence of all intelligence and all moral 
love, appears of such range and character as to 
set itself apart from that of all his brethren, -tit 
is an obvious fact that Nazareth cannot account 
for Christ; we see at once that the mere earthly 
conditions of heredity and environment can in 
no single case explain the fact either of intelli¬ 
gence or sainthood. But with the intelligence 
and character of Christ before us, revealed through 
his thought and his service, we go further. We 


128 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

affirm that the Eternal is under a unique relation 
and exercise in the production of him. In his 
age Jesus stands alone; there are no conditions 
of ancestry or circumstances that can possibly 
account for him. All men, either in their ra¬ 
tional endowment or in their moral character, or 
in both, transcend time; but Christ alone tran¬ 
scends all time. His thought after two thousand 
years needs no revision. His conceptions of God, 
of man, and human society are ultimate concep¬ 
tions; intellectual power cannot go beyond them, 
can never even master their entire content. His 
spirit has upon it the mark of finality, his char¬ 
acter is the full impression upon humanity of the 
moral perfection of the Deity. The ultimate- 
ness of Christ’s thought and the finality of his 
spirit differentiate his transcendence from that 
of the greatest and best of mankind, and ground 
his being in the Godhead in a way solitary and 
supreme. 

Not only is there in our Lord the absence of 
defect; there is also complete realization of ideal 
manhood. In any adequate view of him, the 
negative toward sin must be supplemented with 
the positive toward righteousness. Peter stood 
in his presence and cried, “Depart from me, for 
I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 1 The relation here 
is of the sinful to the sinless; and as the apostle 
stood to his Master, so all suceeding generations 
1 Luke y. 8. 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN . 129 

of noble men have felt in the same august pres¬ 
ence. It is impossible to enter the domain of 
Christ’s teaching without instant apprehension of 
the immeasurable moral difference presented to 
the spirit that even the best.men carry there. 
There is no need of preaching. JChe conscience 
of each man, the conscience of each age, the con¬ 
science of the world, instantly finds and reports 
the contrast, and in its name brings into human 
life the moral rebuke of the Infinite, -t The intro¬ 
duction of men to Christ has ever been accom¬ 
panied on their part with feelings of utter un¬ 
worthiness. The sense of correction that Christ 
imparts, the consciousness of defect and unwor¬ 
thiness that he elicits, and the shadow of moral 
failure under which they live who are nearest to 
him, reveal something that we do well to con¬ 
sider. The consciousness of sin is largely the 
creation of Christ. Men like Paul, and Lu¬ 
ther, and Edwards show this most impressively. 
Their sense of the error and corruption of life is 
born in the Lord’s presence, it is deepened with 
the progress of the years, and to the last they are 
distressed with the defect of existence that Christ’s 
character inevitably discovers. The consciousness 
of sin that fills our Western civilization, that is 
deepest in the noblest spirits, is but the stern 
report of the moral contrast that our Master pre¬ 
sents to the world even at its best. The moon at 
the full is but a hemisphere of light; the obverse 


130 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

side is a hemisphere of darkness. The half that 
lies in the great illumination must make the half 
that lies in unrelieved gloom terribly aware of 
itself. Men standing in the glory of Christ’s 
character often look as if they were as radiant 
as he; but the splendor is borrowed, and, besides, 
it covers only the side of life that is turned to¬ 
ward him. There is another side to every life, 
— the half that is turned away from the Lord, the 
vast obverse of our humanity that rolls on in 
Christless gloom. And the brightness that falls 
from their Master upon part of their character 
makes his best disciples feel the horror of great 
darkness in which so much of their being moves. 
We see Christ in Gethsemane in his agony and 
bloody sweat. It is the most momentous hour in 
human history. It is the crisis that is to show 
the essential nature of the spirit under trial. 
Beside Jesus are the elect of his disciples, — 
Peter, James, and John. It is also the supreme 
hour in their lives, — the emergency that is to 
reveal their inmost character. What now is the 
issue of the common trial? When the world was 
most in need of a loyal Master, and when loyalty 
cost an unspeakable price, Christ was true; when 
the Master was most in need of friendship, and 
when friendship was made easy and almost inev¬ 
itable by the tender solicitation of the sublime 
sufferer, his disciples were false. It is no injus¬ 
tice to say that, taking life as a whole, and includ- 


MAN'S INCOMPLETENESS. 


131 


ing motive as well as conduct, spirit no less than 
behavior, here we have the difference between 
Christ and humanity. We note the community 
in temptation; we must also note the eternal 
difference in the issue. As Christ was to his 
elect disciples in the hour of their common crisis, 
so is Christ to mankind. There is an identity 
divinely significant, but it rests upon a difference 
as deep as the perfection of God. 

And even if we anticipate the time when the 
relation of the disciple to his Master shall no 
longer be that of the sinful to the sinless and 
holy, we simply come upon a new and finer form 
of the eternal contrast. For the relation of the 
soul to Christ will forever be that of the imper¬ 
fect to the perfect, the incomplete to the com¬ 
plete. Incompleteness must be the note of our 
human existence through all time. We follow 
on to know the Lord. The spring and zest of 
our life are here. We follow the Lamb whither¬ 
soever he goeth. His perfection is the goal at 
which our imperfection aims; his fullness is that 
upon which humanity’s defect forever draws. 
This is the central truth of the Transfiguration. 
That great scene has first a factual life, and then 
a prophetic. It is first of all the revelation, in 
the midst of his humiliation, of the moral perfec¬ 
tion that dwelt in Christ. It is the discovery of 
the unutterable splendor of goodness that lived 
in him, the infinite reserve of his being, — that 


132 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

reserve upon which the church in all subsequent 
times was to draw, and which was to remain under 
that drain without the shadow of reduction. One 
cannot study this scene without feeling that the 
moral glory has its source in a difference of 
being that goes back into the Godhead; that the 
awful reserve of life, for a moment uncovered, is 
the evidence of a transcendent nature; that here 
indeed we have the manifestation of the Deity 
in Christ. This is the factual side, the actual 
disclosure of the fathomless glory of the Lord. 
There is, however, the prophetic side. The Mas¬ 
ter and his disciples upon Tabor are not to each 
other as the divine and the human, but as the 
perfect and the imperfect. For it is the high 
destiny of mankind to go on after this goodness, 
to compass more and more of it, and to gather 
into its heart an ever larger measure of the excel¬ 
lence of Christ. What Christ is in complete 
realization, that humanity is prophetically; he is 
the perfect humanity after which we must forever 
strive, and short of which we must forever fall. 
The difference between Jesus and his disciples 
upon Mount Tabor is again the difference between 
him and mankind. It is the difference between 
complete realization and immortal prophecy. 
And, again, the moral contrast is the sign of the 
fact that Christ’s being has a relation to God 
transcendent and unique. It was the vision of 
the endless perfection of Jesus that for Athana- 


MANIFOLDNESS OF CHRIST. 133 

sius set him apart from the world, while it 
brought him infinitely near. “And, in a word,” 
to quote another striking passage from the work 
of that acute and serious mind, “ the achievements 
of the Saviour, resulting from his becoming 
man, are of such kind and number that, if one 
should wish to enumerate them, he may be com¬ 
pared to men who gaze at the expanse of the sea 
and wish to count its waves. For as one cannot 
take in the whole of the waves with his eyes, for 
those that are coming on baffle the sense of him 
that attempts it, so for him that would take in 
all the achievements of Christ in the body, it is 
impossible to take in the whole, even by reckon¬ 
ing them up, as those which go beyond his thought 
are more than those he thinks he has taken in. 
Better is it, then, not to aim at speaking of the 
whole, where one cannot do justice even to a part, 
but, after mentioning one more, to leave the 
whole for you to marvel at. For all alike are 
marvelous, and wherever a man turns his glance 
he may behold on that side the divinity of the 
Word, and be struck with exceeding great awe .” 1 

We come, then, to the great conclusion that 
that which seems to put the Master on a level 
with mankind — the fact that he is the moral 
ideal of the world — is indeed the chief sign of 
his differentiation from the human race. That 
Christ should be the acknowledged moral ideal 
1 The Incarnation , ch. liv. 4, 5. 


134 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY , 

means nothing else than the unattainableness of 
his goodness, the utter perfection of his charac¬ 
ter. The ethical significance of Christ is infinite. 
^And this infinitude of Christ is not a dream from 
the brain of a devotee, it is the sublime assertion 
of history; it is the meaning of the unattainable 
moral idealism of which he is the living embodi¬ 
ment. For the moral goal must ever be a flying 
goal; the standard to which we are to grow must 
be ever rising; the type to which we are to be 
conformed must have in it inexhaustible fullnessju 
Paul is affirming the essential infinitude, the true 
deity of Christ, when he says, “I press on, if so 
be that I may apprehend that for which also I 
was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I 
count not myself yet to have apprehended: but 
one thing I do, forgetting the things which are 
behind, and stretching forward to the things 
which are before, I press on toward the goal unto 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus .” 1 The goal is the flying goal; the high 
calling is ever lifting itself into the infinite heights 
of God in Christ Jesus. We behold Paul in his 
eager, swift, unresting pursuit of the highest in 
Christ, and at the end we hear him speaking of 
the far-off crown of righteousness to which he 
looks forward in inspired wonder as the incentive 
and reward of his heroic endeavor. X We behold 
the Christian centuries pursuing Christ. Genera- 
1 Philippians iii. 12-14. 


CHRIST THE MORAL IDEAL. 


185 


tion after generation of exalted spirits have beheld 
in Christ the supreme beatitude of existence. 
They have sought to compass it by the most eager 
and strenuous toil. They have found unspeak¬ 
able good; but their final confession has ever 
been of the inexhaustible fullness in Christ. Thus 
the chase of the centuries after Christ, this noble 
pursuit with its eternal failure to overtake or 
even approach the receding and growing splendor, 
is the most moving and amazing proclamation of 
the infinitude of our Lord. + The moral ideal for 
mankind that he is, and that seems to so many 
to put him on a level utterly human, becomes 
the sign of his eternal difference from our race 
and lifts him into identity of being with God. 
That our Lord is the moral ideal of humanity 
implies these two things, — that he is one with 
humanity, and that he transcends it infinitely. 
It implies that upon the difference, the deity in 
his nature, rest the other imperishable truths, — 
the kinship between God and man, and the pres¬ 
ence in history of the moral ideal of the world. In 
that wonder of modern skill, the Forth Bridge, the 
mighty span of seventeen hundred feet is sprung 
from pillars sunk deep in the heart of the earth. 
One looks upon the vast superstructure; one 
beholds ships of any reach of mast sailing under 
the arch dwarfed into insignificance; one sees the 
swift passage from limit to limit of the traffic 
and travel of the Island; one takes in the utility 


136 CHRIST IN THE FAITH OF TO-DAY. 

and majesty of the stupendous structure, and then 
asks upon what does all this rest? For an answer 
to that question, one must follow the arch to the 
water’s edge; one must pierce below the floods. 
Down there out of sight, hidden in the bed of 
the river, resting upon the bosom of the earth, are 
the sunken pillars that hold aloft what is so use¬ 
ful to life and so imposing and amazing to the 
eye. It is thus with our faith in Christ. The 
discernible part of him, the sublime superstruc¬ 
ture of his humanity and service, the imitable 
and reproducible characteristics in him, the high 
career over which faith goes in victorious pursuit 
of the ethical goal of human life, and in confident 
grasp of the sonship of all men to God, is based 
upon the inimitable, the unreproducible, the in¬ 
effable in Christ. Below time, deeper than the 
relations of Creator and creature, his being goes; 
he is the Eternal Humanity in the life of the 
Infinite. 


CHAPTER III, 


THE SIGNIFICANCE TO-DAY OF A SUPREME 
CHRISTOLOGY. 


T Is yap eyvo vovv Kvpiov. — Homans xi. 34. 

'r)/me\s Se vovv Xpiarov %x°l x * v ‘ — 1 Corinthians ii. 16. 

“ If, then, not only the law which is upon the earth is a 
shadow, but also all our life which is upon the earth is the same, 
and we live among the nations under the shadow of Christ, we 
must see whether the truth of all these shadows may not come 
to be known in that revelation.” — Origen, De Principiis , Book 
II. ch. vi. 7. 

“We beseech the Father of Lights, if he is the God of in¬ 
finite charity we proclaim him to be, to tell us whether all our 
thoughts of freedom and truth have proceeded from the Father 
of Lies, — whether for eighteen centuries we have been prop¬ 
agating a mockery when we have said that there is a Son of 
God, who is the Truth, and who can make us free.” — F. D. 
Maurice, Theological Essays , p. 90. 

“ For my own part, I think that sympathy is one condition of 
historical insight; and if I had no sympathy with that Old Tes¬ 
tament religion as the ripe fruit of which I regard primitive 
Christianity, I should know that my labors would be smitten 
with sterility. ... We will study the products of the soil, 
and gather such precious gifts as we can for Him to whom the 
star will point us.” —Dr. T. K. Cheyne, Bampton Lectures, p. 2. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE TO-DAY OF A SUPREME 
CHRISTOLOGY. 

The high Christology for which I contended 
in the last chapter, I believe to he of the greatest 
moment in reference to the intellectual life char¬ 
acteristic of the time. Of course it is believed 
that the transcendent view of the Person of Jesus 
is in and of itself the true view; it is also held to 
be the regulative principle in all valid thinking 
upon ultimate things, the great constructive and 
conservative force in Christian theology. With¬ 
out this guide, students will lose themselves in the 
wilderness of mere biblical learning; they will 
have no oracle to question concerning the worth 
of new theological theory, no standard of truth 
whereby its value can be measured; they will be 
shallow optimists or prophets of despair before 
the vast social problems of the age; they will be 
unable to raise any effectual barrier against the 
materialism, philosophical and practical, which 
confronts this generation. -fBut with Christ as 
Lord, and with the Lord as the Spirit, one may 
hope for great popular gain to the Bible from the 


140 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


new and illuminating scholarship through which 
it is passing; one may look for a scheme of Chris¬ 
tian theology more accordant with the facts of 
human history, the moral reason of mankind, 
and the highest in revelation; one may entertain 
the most exalted social ideal with the confidence 
of intelligence as well as the warmth of love, and 
take part in the stupendous enterprise of realiz¬ 
ing the reign of righteousness in the earth with¬ 
out danger of falling a victim either to fanaticism 
or despair; and, lastly, one may feel one’s self 
qualified to resist all forms of opinion that belit¬ 
tle the significance of the spirit of man.'/ 

To every great movement there are two sides. 
It is rich with possible good to mankind, and it 
is big with possible disaster. Leadership is the 
grand permanent necessity of humanity. The 
simplest form of this necessity is the leadership 
which every man must exercise over himself. 
The control of the energies of thought, the disci¬ 
pline of the forces of passion, the drill of all the 
great psychic possibilities, their larger and better 
organization, and the handling of them, as a 
great general does his army, is part of the ever¬ 
lasting obligation resting upon rational life. An¬ 
other form of the same necessity meets one in the 
family. Here is a movement of the most beauti¬ 
ful promise, and at the same time under constant 
menace. Almost all homes start on the equal 
footing of great instincts. Honor, self-sacrifice, 


ADEQUATE LEADERSHIP. 141 

love, and the soul of a transforming friendship 
lie abundant in the vast instinctive forces upon 
which the household is founded. These are the 
magnificent materials out of which, by discipline, 
drill, organization, and wise leadership, the invin¬ 
cible standing army of domestic happiness may 
be developed. The victory or defeat of family 
ideals, the honor or the shame of the home, sim¬ 
ply means leadership, or the absence of it. One 
might trace the working of the same principle 
through all the widening circles of business enter¬ 
prise and political life. But it is time to give 
this thought the direction for which it is here 
introduced. The gravest question that can come 
before the responsible leaders in the religious 
world in any generation concerns the control of 
the best movements. To have a race-horse get 
away from its driver is bad, to have an express 
train going at full speed leave the rails is greatly 
worse, and to have our planet escape from the 
grasp of gravitation would be a supreme calam¬ 
ity. ^The richer the enterprise is in possible 
benefits to the world, the deeper should be the 
anxiety for its wise control, v Looking backward 
over the history of the church, one is profoundly 
impressed with the importance of adequate lead¬ 
ership. The vast significance of Stephen lies 
in the fact that he began the rescue of Christian¬ 
ity from the incompetent hands of Jewish disci¬ 
ples, that he spoke one word of magnificent in- 


142 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


sight for the universalism of the gospel; and the 
larger merit of the apostle Paul is best seen from 
this point of view. Modern New Testament 
scholarship has made conspicuous the grandeur of 
Paul’s contention, the breadth of the principle 
upon which he stood, and the unparalleled service 
which he rendered in emancipating Christianity 
from Judaism, in exhibiting it in its independent 
and surpassing grace, and in employing with 
such wisdom and devotion his consummate genius 
for almost every variety of leadership, in guiding 
to its infinitely beneficent issues the divine move¬ 
ment inaugurated by his Master. One hardly 
dares picture what the religion of Jesus would 
have come to if it had been left exclusively in 
the hands of men like Peter and James. The 
fact that Stephen and Paul and John, and not 
they, were in chief command, has changed the 
character of the Christian centuries, — has indeed 
made possible all the new emancipations that the 
church has experienced. When, in the third cen¬ 
tury, Christianity came into vital contact with 
Greek philosophy, the beneficence of the issue 
was due, humanly speaking, to the fact that a 
Clement, an Origen, an Athanasius controlled 
the great experiment; and later, when Roman 
law and institution and custom became the rich 
environment, the substantial message of Jesus 
was saved through competent and masterly leader¬ 
ship. So long as the Reformation was under the 


UNITARIAN ISM AND HISTORY. 143 


direction of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli 
and Knox, it brought forth its best fruits; when 
the mighty forces passed into other and inferior 
hands, all manner of evil results followed. The 
counter Reformation in the Roman Church got its 
example and incitement from the great German, 
but it got its opportunity through the waste into 
which the original river of God had run. One of 
the greatest movements in human history, the 
French Revolution, became an immeasurable trag¬ 
edy through want of a masterful guiding mind. 
Out of that terrible vital drama vast benefits, 
profound lessons, and lasting impulses have come 
to the modern world; but had there been an ade¬ 
quate presiding character, a man like Cromwell 
or Washington or Lincoln, instead of a moral 
earthquake we should have had an orderly and 
far less tragic evolution. The New England 
Unitarian movement was fortunate in its first 
great leaders. The men who began the enter¬ 
prise had a great message to deliver, the reality 
of the Eternal Fatherhood and the fact of a di¬ 
vine humanity. Men like Channing and Hedge 
and Peabody contributed to Christian thought 
something which, if it had possessed in early 
times, it had long ago lost; and when they had 
done their special work they began to wonder if, 
after all, there might not be a diviner meaning 
in the great historic symbols than they had 
dreamed. Especially is this true of Hedge and 


144 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


Peabody. The conviction kept gaining upon 
them that, after having done their positive work 
of vindicating the real Fatherhood of God and 
the universal human sonship, there might be a 
possible return, not indeed to the Orthodoxy with 
which they had broken, and which every one now 
recognizes as a thing of the past, but to the essen¬ 
tial and eternal truth hidden in the old creeds, 
and which is so much greater than the movement 
represented by them. This meditation of a pos¬ 
sible return, through a profounder interpretation 
of historic Christianity, may be traced in several 
of the great leaders of the first generation of Uni¬ 
tarians. This was one of the many indications 
of their genius. If that movement, which stands 
associated with so much that is great in our his¬ 
tory, and whose roll-call includes so large a com¬ 
pany of men distinguished alike for intellectual 
power and high character, should spend its force 
and run out, it will be owing to this one thing, 
more than to all others, that its leaders to-day 
have given up this meditation of a deeper return 
to the past. The eternal gospel lies there: it 
looks out through all the symbols of Christian his¬ 
tory ; it has meanings in it which the old names 
cover but do not exhaust, and which our modern 
thinkers do not begin to fathom; it has room in 
it for the great Unitarian contribution, and for 
every other vital conception that the struggles of 
noble men have forced afresh upon the attention 


THE BROAD CHURCH. 


145 


of the world. The Unitarian movement has its 
opportunity here: it must contemplate some kind 
of a return, — a return consistent with its mag¬ 
nificent protest and achievement, — or it must 
engage in a serious meditation with death. Its 
future depends upon the wisdom and courage of 
its leaders. The Broad Church party in the 
Church of England is another example. So long 
as it was under the direction of the great and 
devout mind of Maurice, the party stood for the 
highest things in the faith of all Christians. Its 
philosophy of Christianity and Christian institu¬ 
tions is the deepest in our English tongue. It 
was a school of thought full of light and heat at 
the same time, and while its master remained at 
its head it was a positive, inclusive, world-enrich¬ 
ing movement. Since his death a new genera¬ 
tion has risen up, and the school has more and 
more tended to lose definite Christian character¬ 
istics and to become a denying spirit. It lives 
under the shadow of agnosticism, and rejoices to 
show how very little it is necessary to believe in 
order to belong to the Church of England. The 
sceptre is passing from its hands, and that which 
began its career of influence, beautiful as the 
Syrian river Abana issuing from the snows of 
Lebanon, goes to waste, like it, in the burning 
wilderness of negation. Whenever a school of 
thought ceases to be constructive, in the true 
sense creative; whenever it becomes predomi- 


146 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


nantly negative, — its influence is on the wane, its 
days are numbered. The world is a vast reality; 
Christianity is, as Goethe said, an infinite thing; 
and the multitudes of serious people will forever 
refuse to follow the men who lead no whither, and 
who spend their force in reducing to a poor mini¬ 
mum the significance of our human universe. 

If, now, one asks what has been the great note 
of successful leadership in the past, the answer is 
at hand. The men who have been, in the fullest 
measure and the noblest manner, under the pro¬ 
phetic mind of the Lord, the masters who have 
been conscious of their Master in heaven, and 
who have held the task at which they toiled to the 
judgment seat of Christ, have been the great 
leaders in Christian history. In so far as they 
have been subject to this supernal prophetic 
mind, they have been able to avert the possible 
disaster; they have been strong enough to realize 
the possible benefit to the new age of the new 
development of the eternal truth. In so far as 
Paul, and Origen, and Augustine, and Luther, 
and Edwards, and the New England Unitarians 
have escaped from the mind of Christ, or from the 
logic of that mind, they have become eccentric, 
they have at last landed their followers in Dante’s 
serious predicament: — 

“ In the midway of this our mortal life, 

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, 

Gone from the path direct; and e’en to tell, 

It were no easy task, how savage wild 


LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 


147 


That forest, how robust and rough its growth, 

Which to remember only, my dismay 
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.” 1 

We may assume it as an axiom, that every new 
movement in human thinking and in human 
affairs that escapes from the leadership of the 
Lord will go to waste. It will prove a sort of 
Alcibiades. The vaster it is in promise, the 
greater will be the wreck if the control of the 
Supreme Mind in history is despised and rejected. 

It is this sense of safety only in the leadership 
of Christ that makes the present theological situ¬ 
ation so serious. Hitherto the fight has been for 
liberty; the problem now is the wise and benefi¬ 
cent use of our liberty. The victory for freedom 
of Christian scholarship does not by any means 
end the war. The victory for wisdom remains 
to be won. This is mainly the phase of the cam¬ 
paign upon which the Christian thinkers of this 
generation have now entered. They have won 
their freedom. They have inaugurated a new theo¬ 
logical movement; it is gaining greater headway 
with every year. But they have not yet subdued 
this new power to the sovereignty of the Lord. 
And, while this continues to be the state of the 
case, the whole thing is but a doubtful experi¬ 
ment. Incidental benefits and emancipations, 
one may readily admit, have already come; but 
that a universal and permanent change for the 

1 Inferno, canto i., opening lines. 


148 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


better has arrived must not be too hastily as¬ 
sumed. The philosophy of Christianity and of 
man’s life in this world, with which this genera¬ 
tion has largely broken, contained elements of 
true greatness and everlasting moment; and the 
forms of human character that rose up under its 
influence stand in history invested with a noble 
dignity, and alive still with a terrible passion for 
righteousness. I believe that the possibility of 
a universal and permanent improvement in the 
working philosophy of life has arrived; but 
whether the possibility shall become actual is 
indeed the large and serious problem before the 
Christian thinkers of to-day. This new birth of 
the Christian centuries is already here. It is a 
goodly child, but it represents in its blood and 
brain a double inheritance. It comes from the 
Lord from heaven, by way of the first man who 
was of the earth earthy. Men of the new type 
of thought have had their great festival hours; 
they have exchanged sentiments of joy and hope 
over the prophetic new-comer. It has seemed 
to them like the visit of the dayspring from on 
high, a light to enlighten the nations, and the 
latest glory of the church. But the festival hour 
is gone; the years of wise education and direc¬ 
tion of the new life have come. A sword shall 
assuredly pierce through the heart of the leaders 
of to-day if they shall fail to subdue this fresh 
birth of time to the rule of the Highest, if they 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 149 

shall cease to remember that the advent of a 
vaster and nobler faith must mean the vaster and 
nobler advent of Christ. Unless he is the Alpha 
and Omega of this new movement it will end in 
vanity, it will become the despair of its support¬ 
ers. The purpose of this chapter has now been, 
it is hoped, clearly indicated, and we may go on 
to consider several of the greater religious inter¬ 
ests of the time in relation to the mind of Christ, 
and the first must be the higher criticism. 

I. 

4 The Bible is the monumental record of the 
monumental revelation of the mind of God to 
mankind. The great instrument of this disclos¬ 
ure of the thought of the Eternal is prophetic 
genius, and this mediating instrumentality be¬ 
comes supreme and final in the prophetic mind 
of Jesus Christ. The Bible, therefore, presents 
a twofold problem to the modern world: its pro¬ 
duction is a question for the historian, and its 
character concerns the ethical and theological 
student. The Bible as a collection of books 
has a history, and the problem of the higher 
criticism is to pierce through the crude masses of 
received opinion, and to reach as near as possible 
to the actual historic process. In a true sense, 
the Bible belongs to the historical and literary 
scholar, just as the Homeric poems and all other 
ancient literature belong to him. Our sacred 


150 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


writings were produced at certain times, in cer¬ 
tain largely important circumstances, in certain 
parts, separated by intervals longer or shorter, 
and by certain men. To fix for all readers of 
these books the time of their production; to de¬ 
fine the widely significant environments into which 
they were born, and in reaction against which 
they grew and took mature shape in the thought 
and style of the author; to find the real literary 
unities, and to dissolve apparent wholes into their 
parts, and in each case to assign each distinct 
composition to its real author, — this is the great 
enterprise of the higher critic. When one con¬ 
siders its scope, and measures it against the 
largest possible learning and the keenest critical 
power, one may well read the books of these 
scholars with Carlyle’s maxim of “wise memory 
and wise oblivion ” in mind. Still, the Old and 
New Testaments, as a literary product in time, 
belong to the historian. He must carry to the 
achievement of his task only the interests of his¬ 
torical science; he must be allowed all the time 
needful for the accomplishment of an enterprise 
of such vast reach; he must mine away amid 
growing heaps of debris and confusion, while the 
vein that he is working continues unexhausted; 
he must plan for a thousand generations of suc¬ 
cessors, who will bring to the uncompleted work 
an improved equipment and ampler powers; he 
must idealize his individual undertaking into part 


THE BIBLE AND SCHOLARSHIP. 151 

of the historical task of humanity. Nothing can, 
for one moment, be allowed to interfere with the 
interests of this great department of science. 
The question has nothing mystical or transcend¬ 
ent about it; it is simply a question of fact. As 
the heavenly bodies, their relations, their move¬ 
ments, and their times and seasons, are the prob¬ 
lem of astronomical science, so the sacred writ¬ 
ings that compose our Bible, their date, their 
environment, their parts, and their authorship, 
are a problem for historical science. These ques¬ 
tions do not in the first instance at all concern 
faith; they concern scholarship, and they can be 
settled only by scholarship^" 

^ But the Bible transcends the mere historian. 
So far as it is outward fact, it falls within his 
domain; but so far as it is a body of ethical and 
spiritual truth, it falls within the concern of 
humanity. The revelation of God as a record 
belongs to learning; but as a moral and spiritual 
content it belongs to all prophetic souls. It is 
this double character of the Bible that is apt to 
be forgotten at the present time. Astronomers 
are busy with the determination of the condition 
of things on the planet Mars. They are trying 
to spell out its history, the character of the high¬ 
est forms of the life that may be there; and 
occasionally we hear of interesting discoveries 
concerning our nearest solar neighbor and our 
possible brethren, of whom we seem to have got- 


152 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


ten the inside track. Now this aspect of the 
militant planet is of great interest, but it is not 
the only aspect. Mars in one sense belongs to 
astronomers, and in another and far loftier sense 
it belongs to humanity. The service which it 
may ultimately render to our race through science 
may be wonderful, but even that service will be 
insignificant compared with what it has done for 
mankind, since the morning of time, through the 
ministry of beauty. The Mars of science works 
out its benefits very slowly; the Mars of poetry 
is forever in the perfect fulfillment of its mission; 
in regard to the former there may be doubt and 
hesitation, but with respect to the latter there 
can be only certain and limitless joy. Whether 
the lines on its surface be canals may for a long 
time remain a matter of debate; but souls with 
serious purpose and a sense of the beautiful have 
ever felt what Longfellow expresses so exquis- 
itely: — 

“ Is it the tender star of love ? 

The star of love and dreams ? 

Oh no ! from that blue tent above, 

A hero’s armor gleams. 

“ 0 star of strength ! I see thee stand 
And smile upon my pain; 

Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand 
And I am strong again.” 

And as the star has an interest beyond the sphere 
of science, transcending utterly the work of the 


THE DIVINE STANDARD. 


158 


astronomer, so the Bible has a significance not 
only for the historian, but also for humanity. It 
is this last and highest significance that must be 
conserved, and it can be done, in my judgment, 
only as the mind of Christ is carried through the 
entire collection of these sacred writings as the 
absolute judge of their worth. 

Distinct as are the historical and spiritual as¬ 
pects of the Bible to the scholarly mind, it must 
be confessed that they are in popular thought in 
the saddest confusion. The results of the higher 
criticism are simply bewildering to the average 
layman. They thus perplex him because he has 
regarded the Bible as carrying with it in every 
book, chapter, and verse the evidence of its di¬ 
vine worth, because he has failed to judge it by 
the Person of Christ. And all men must share 
in this confusion if there is nothing fixed in 
Christian faith. The higher criticism mutilates 
our Bible, if the Bible does not witness to some¬ 
thing greater than itself. This modern method of 
investigation comes in the name of pure scholar¬ 
ship, with the authority of historical science, and 
destroys the letter. If one does not reach the 
Christ through both Testaments, if one cannot 
invoke him for the determination of their worth, 
one must have a horror of the higher criticism. 
To retain profound and living faith in the Bible 
to-day, one must be able to carry through the 
new views of its genesis, the dissolution of its 


154 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOG Y. 


parts, and the reversions of its history a divine 
standard of value. That standard of value is the 
mind of Christ. With the Christ of the New 
Testament and Christian history, representing in 
himself the character and purpose of God, and 
the drift of the universe in accordance with that 
purpose, faith will obtain new insights and a 
richer sense of the progress of revelation from 
following the destructive path of all sane criti¬ 
cism. Belief in the miraculous need not be sur¬ 
rendered, but it must be relegated to its place of 
due subordination. The errant element, particu¬ 
larly in the Old Testament, will be frankly ad¬ 
mitted, and the introductory and imperfect nature 
of the whole Hebrew dispensation. Paul’s start¬ 
ling comparisons in his second letter to the Corin¬ 
thians 1 between the dispensations of Moses and 
of Christ will then be understood, and the mag¬ 
nificent argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
on the imperfect character of the older revelation, 
and on the catholicity and finality of Christianity, 
will be appreciated at its full superlative worth. 
The way in which Paul the Pharisee, the passion¬ 
ate devotee of Judaism, was able to emancipate 
himself, is of the highest moment to the modern 
student of the Bible. But for the mind of 
Christ, it is impossible to conceive of this emanci¬ 
pation ; or, if it be possible on the supposition of 
a lapse into atheism, this is not the transcending 
1 2 Cor. iii. 


PAUL'S EMANCIPATION. 


155 


of an old faith, but the contradiction of it, the 
abandonment of all faith. Paul was enabled to 
occupy a higher point of vision: he was lifted to 
an elevation from which he could behold other 
and brighter worlds; he was furnished with an 
ideal, the mind of the Lord, and thus could 
determine the defect of the literature upon which 
he had grown to manhood. It is indeed wonder¬ 
ful to see how the Jewish disciples of Jesus move 
out from under the sovereignty of the Old Testa¬ 
ment. It no longer satisfies them; they have 
been lifted beyond its scope; they live in a new 
and diviner world. The secret of this easy and 
almost unconscious self-emancipation lies in the 
Christ ideal that filled their thoughts. They 
possess an absolute measure for truth, and right¬ 
eousness, and beauty; Christ had made them 
free. No higher critic to-day, who remains a 
believer in God and in an historic revelation, 
transcends the orthodox tradition about the Bible 
more completely than Paul transcended the Jew¬ 
ish tradition concerning the Hebrew Scriptures. 
And what is true of him holds equally of the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the 
apostle John. The freedom of movement is 
something amazing. At the same time these men 
possess a new sense of the worth of the old reve¬ 
lation. And this should be true now. The mind 
of Christ reveals the defect of the Old Testament; 
it brings into impressive relief its imperishable 


156 


A SUPREME CHBISTOLOGY. 


value, — the depth and vitality of its movement 
in the spirit, the greatness of its human interest, 
the ocean expanse and profundity of its literature, 
its inapproachable prophetic genius, its towering 
preeminence among all pre-Christian forms of 
the revelation of God to mankind. With the 
Master of John and Paul as our Master, there 
need be no special pleading for the Old Testa¬ 
ment, no fine-spun theories to reconcile it as a 
totality with the Absolute Righteousness, no mis¬ 
erable apologetic identifying it to its last word 
with the Infinite Love. The Sermon on the 
Mount is the great revision of the Hebrew faith. 
In that discourse there is outlined, in a few brief 
paragraphs and with the deepest reverence, a 
method of criticism infinitely more radical than 
any presented by the scholarship of to-day. The 
whole past is brought under the judgment of its 
ideal as interpreted by the supreme Idealist. 
There could not be a severer test; and the con¬ 
tinued application of it to the Bible will give 
that book its legitimate place in Christian faith. 

The old argument against the higher criticism 
from the fact that Jesus used the Old Testament, 
and which assumes that if Moses had not written 
the Pentateuch and David the Psalms and Solo¬ 
mon Ecclesiastes, — which takes for granted that 
if the traditional view of the origin and composi¬ 
tion of the Hebrew literature had not been true, 
Christ would have told his disciples so, — is self- 


PRINCIPLE OF ACCOMMODATION. 157 


evidently worthless. The principle of the In¬ 
carnation involves an accommodation of the Eter¬ 
nal to temporal conditions; and it was clearly 
beyond even the power of Divinity in three short 
years to sweep the Jewish mind clean of all its 
errors and superstitions. The reserve of Christ, 
in dealing with an age at all points so immeasur¬ 
ably below him, is one of the notes of his surpass¬ 
ing greatness. He knew that the individual, the 
age, and the race must outgrow crude and erro¬ 
neous opinion, — that, indeed, growth is the only 
possible emancipation. He must, therefore, have 
passed over a thousand foolish notions as if they 
were not; he was, in fact, under the necessity of 
introducing his original and absolute teaching in 
the current forms of thought which were fre¬ 
quently unsatisfactory. Employing the principle 
of accommodation as far as perfect fidelity to 
the truth would allow, he was even then largely 
misunderstood. Possessing the gift of communi¬ 
cation, the genius of the teacher in a measure 
absolutely inapproachable, he was not able wholly 
to overcome the obstacle of human stupidity. 
When one thinks of the continuous act of accom¬ 
modation, the perpetual rational self-sacrifice in¬ 
volved in the career of Jesus, one must regard as 
nonsensical the claim that, if the Jewish tradition 
about the origin, date, and authorship of the 
various books of the Old Testament had been 
erroneous, he would have put himself on record 


158 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


against it. He had a whole world of mistakes 
and superstitions and lies against which to go on 
record, and he had no time for one so compara¬ 
tively insignificant. The Old Testament, as a 
question for the historian, did not touch the mind 
of Jesus, so far as we can see. It was an aspect 
of the Hebrew Bible that did not pressingly con¬ 
cern him, and that he thought he could leave to 
his far-off disciples in Germany and Britain and 
America to settle among themselves. But while 
the Old Testament in its purely historical aspect 
lies entirely outside the work that Christ set for 
himself, still, in another sense, the fact that it 
was his sacred book is of the utmost importance. 
While he transcends it infinitely, he nevertheless 
makes conspicuous its permanent interest. On 
the Hebrew Scriptures he was educated; from 
them he preached the sermon that marked the 
beginning of his career ; 1 and his mission was the 
divine continuation of their whole higher spirit. 
No one can go with Jesus through his great ini¬ 
tial temptation, and witness the weapons by which 
he wins his triple victory, without a new and pro¬ 
founder sense of reverence for the Old Testament. 
Out of the Book of Deuteronomy, over which the 
higher critics have had their battles, came the 
three sentences by which Jesus kept his heart and 
repelled the tempter: “Man shall not live by 
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
1 Luke iv. 16-22. 


CHRIST AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 159 

out of the mouth of God; ” “thou shalt not tempt 
the Lord thy God;” “thou shalt worship the 
Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” 
These are the weapons of the Spirit drawn from 
the vast armory of the Old Testament, with which 
Jesus won his victory for himself and for human¬ 
ity . 1 One must recall the fact that the hymn 
which he sung with his disciples at the close of 
the Last Supper was from the Hebrew Psalter ; 2 
and that again, in his agony and bloody sweat, 
when the supreme duty of surrender at any cost 
to the will of God appeared before him, it came 
in the words of another Psalm : 3 “I delight to 
do thy will, O my God.” While, in his final 
hours upon the cross, as at all times during his 
life, he had thoughts and experiences for which 
the Old Testament had no words, yet it is pro¬ 
foundly interesting to find Christ using its sacred 
utterances in commending his spirit into the 
hands of his Father . 4 There could be no higher 
testimony to the spiritual worth of the sacred 
writings thus employed. 

Further, Jesus everywhere appears as the ful¬ 
fillment of the forward look of the Old Testa¬ 
ment, the grand historic vindication of the sad 
but invincible optimism of the Hebrew prophets. 
The whole purpose, spirit, and progressive inte¬ 
rior movement recorded in the Old Testament 

1 Deut. vi. 13, 16; viii. 3. 2 Ps. cxiii., cxviii. 

8 Ps. xl. 8. 4 Ps. xxxi. 5. 


160 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


finds its consummation in Christ, and in this way 
he becomes its absolute judge. All that points 
forward toward him, all that in any way truly 
prepares for his coming, all the thoughts and 
enterprises of prophetic Israel that are capable 
of contributing to the mind and work of Christ, 
all in the literature and life of that great race 
that can be taken up into the soul of the Lord, 
is taken up, and thereby receives vindication. 
This is the meaning of the exposition given to 
the Jewish doctors before his death, and that 
other made to the bewildered disciples after the 
resurrection: “Ye search the Scriptures, because 
ye think that in them ye have eternal life: and 
these are they which bear witness of me;” and 
“beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, 
he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the 
things concerning himself .” 1 ^The final signifi¬ 
cance of the Old Testament is its unconscious 
spiritual anticipation of Christ, and Christ is 
forever the judge of its ethical worth and limit. 
Whoever, therefore, is armed with the mind of 
the Master can settle the spiritual question for 
himself. The historical problem is for the scholar, 
and a thousand generations of experts cannot 
hope to give the final solution. Progress will be 
made toward this goal in every generation, and 
the advance is marked and exhilarating even 
now. There is, however, a question concerning 
1 John v. 39; Luke xxiv. 27. 


THE CRITICISM OF LIFE. 


161 


the Bible, both Old Testament and New, which 
scholarship cannot answer. That question is 
raised by the ethical need and judgment of man¬ 
kind, and it can be settled with absolute justice 
only as the standard ethical and religious mind 
is fully applied to the entire biblical literature. 
The man who is full of the mind of Christ is 
dependent upon no authority to declare to him 
the portions of his Bible that are truly the reve¬ 
lation of God; he has an unction from the Holy 
One, and understands for himself. 

The criticism of life in its highest earnestness 
is infinitely harder to bear than that of the in¬ 
tellect. Christian people think of the groups of 
learned, acute, ambitious, and undevout men in 
the universities of Germany and Great Britain 
and America, and they fear for the Bible in their 
hands. They seldom reflect that such tests are 
insignificant beside those applied to this book by 
noble life under the sense of inadequacy for its 
task. It is said that the drowning man will 
clutch at a straw, but this he will not do if there 
is anything more substantial to clutch. vThe real 
and terrible test of the Word of God is applied 
by the sinner who cries out for forgiveness, by 
the spirit crushed with the consciousness of moral 
infirmity in the presence of eternal ideals, by the 
heart under the shadow of a great sorrow, by the 
soul looking in bewilderment into worlds beyond 
time. When one sees men going to the Bible 


162 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


with an awakened conscience, turning its pages 
in the hope that they may inspire a purpose that 
will hold in the mortal struggle with temptation, 
listening for its voices of comfort that they may 
weep no more, and looking for its light in the 
thick darkness of death, then one begins to trem¬ 
ble for the fate of the great book. If it can 
bear the strain of the intensest and noblest life, 
it can smile at all other tests. The intellectual 
trial of the Bible, compared with the moral, is as 
insignificant as the arrows and shells which the 
Lilliputians shot at Gulliver would be, placed 
beside the missiles of a modern battle-ship. " The 
great thing about the Bible is, not that it can 
survive the assaults of hostile criticism, but that 
it is able to endure the assaults of life. - And 
this it has been able to do because it has carried 
the minds of men beyond itself. v The Bible owes 
infinitely more to Christ than Christ does to the 
Bible. Take him out of it, make him no longer 
accessible through it, and it would become at once 
no more than a splendid antiquity. It is his 
presence in it, mystic in the Old Testament, his¬ 
toric in the New, real and divine in both, that 
has given it all its power; and its endurance of 
the vast moral trial to which the successive cen¬ 
turies of earnest men have subjected it comes 
from the Lord. If one retains him in it, and 
reaches him as the wisdom of God through it, 
the Bible will continue to sustain the weight of 


BOOKS WITH A HISTORY. 


163 


the whole earnest world. -IThe most terrible critic 
is not the undevout scholar, but the man who 
wants standing in the truth and assurance of 
eternal’reality. 

The Bible has a literary history. It was pro¬ 
duced in certain parts, in certain places, at cer¬ 
tain times, and by certain men, and it has come 
down embodied in many distinct literary forms. 
Here, again, is the field for pure scholarship; in 
this region nothing but learning is of any account. 
It is simple impertinence for one who is not an 
expert to venture upon an answer to these ques¬ 
tions. *t But the Bible has a spiritual history 
which should be of immense account with noble 
men, and which should give the utmost assurance 
of safety to believers in it as the record of the 
supreme revelation of God to mankind, while 
that record is under the tests of free criticism. 
As to the spiritual vitality of the Scriptures, as 
to their power of survival, history has a word to 
speak of no uncertain sound. Time is the great 
judge. The day, if it is long enough, will re¬ 
veal what is perishable and what is imperishable. 
Men and books that have no history are to be 
considered carefully. The fashion of the world is 
strong, and it passes away and leaves one with 
the supposed hero an exposed charlatan, with the 
imagined literary treasure become a vexation of 
the spirit. Ben Jonson gives as title to one of 
his plays “The Devil is an Ass.” The proposi- 


164 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


tion is absolutely true, but it has taken a long 
time for mankind to arrive at the conclusion, and, 
judging from strong appearances, a considerable 
minority have not yet arrived. History is an 
ethical process, an increasing source of spiritual 
illumination, and its judgment is precious for 
individual faith and guidance beyond all esti¬ 
mate. There were many public men in the time 
of Edmund Burke who were considered his equals, 
if not greatly his superiors; but a hundred years 
of thinking have assigned him a position as be¬ 
yond question the greatest political thinker in 
Britain of the eighteenth century. In Milton’s 
age there were many poets ranked in popular 
esteem above him, but two hundred years of re¬ 
flection have worn the gilt off the common iron 
of their work, and burnished the gold of his. It 
has taken Shakespeare many generations to reach 
his throne. The lion was for a long time con¬ 
cealed from the public eye by the bears and 
monkeys of the great show that crowded all the 
conspicuous places. Upon the brow of the peer¬ 
less dramatic genius of the modern world time 
has set the crown. And Dante’s preeminence, 
so evident to-day, became indisputable only after 
the lapse of centuries. He rises from amid the 
lights of his generation as a star of the first 
magnitude rises from among the camp-fires on 
some hillside. For a considerable time, the camp¬ 
fire appears greater than the heavenly body; it 


THE WORD OF GOD. 


165 


seems a compliment almost too great to be be¬ 
stowed to put both in the same class. But as 
the evening advances the star ascends; and when 
the lower lights are out, it is shining in the 
zenith. These are hints of the service of history 
in making indisputable the ethical and religious 
preeminence of the Bible. It has had a vital 
cosmopolitan trial of two thousand years; it comes 
attested by time as the spiritual treasure of man¬ 
kind. It comes laden with the gratitude of the 
brave, covered with the homage of the seer, and 
perfumed with the love of the suffering men and 
women whom it has lifted into peace. It has 
survived all fashions, and has in its favor the 
verdict of history. Time has proved it to be the 
child of the Eternal, the Word of God to our 
world for all the ages. This is but another way 
of saying that it is the transcendent judgment of 
Christ that reveals the real worth of the Bible, 
and that conserves it for mankind. 

The Bible, then, is_ safe, both in the greater 
moral trial and in the slighter intellectual, be¬ 
cause Christ is in it. Behind the New Testa¬ 
ment is his Divine Person, and if, as I believe, 
the author of the Fourth Gospel is right, behind 
the Old Testament, back of the life of historic 
humanity, beyond the dim beginnings of our race 
upon this planet. Not upon a literature, com¬ 
posed although it is of inimitable biography, 
wonderful history, inapproachable psalm and 


166 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


prophecy, rests our belief; not in a record of a 
divine ministry, made up as it is of priceless 
evangelical narrative and glowing epistle, stands 
our faith, but upon the Spirit that produced 
these, upon the Person who did the works, who 
brought into existence the facts, and who revealed 
the eternal moral order of God of which the Tes¬ 
taments, Old and New, are but an incomplete 
version . 1 

II. 

When one comes to the region of theological 
theory, a high Christology is even of greater im¬ 
portance. The higher criticism is nothing but 
a grand preliminary. It consists of introduction, 
and does not profess to raise, much less to settle, 
a single fundamental question of faith. It pro¬ 
fesses to be but the true reading, oftener but the 
approximation to the true reading, of the records 
that enshrine the ancient revelation. It does 
not come even within sight of the philosophi¬ 
cal problems inhering in the very nature of the 

1 What the higher criticism has done in the way of making 
possible new approaches to the greater minds of the Old Testa¬ 
ment is well illustrated in two familiar books, Dr. Cheyne’s 
“ Jeremiah,” and Dr. G. A. Smith’s “ Isaiah.” It would be diffi¬ 
cult to name a book fuller of insight, sympathy, and construc¬ 
tive imagination than the first; and it would be equally difficult 
to instance a richer development of the mind of two great pro¬ 
phets than the second. The work that Dr. A. B. Bruce has done 
for the mind of the New Testament is of a parallel character, 
and it would have been impossible, but for the achievements of 
historical criticism. 


HIGHER CRITICISM PRELIMINARY. 167 


self-disclosure of God to man. It is a necessary 
work, and one eminently respectable and laudable, 
both as regards the talents and accomplishments 
called for in the critic and the results estab¬ 
lished ; but where the higher criticism ends, true 
theological thinking begins. A great deal of 
credit is due to the higher critics, but too much 
distinction must not be heaped upon them. Some 
of them have received, for purely preliminary 
and exceedingly innocent inquiries, honor enough 
“to sink a navy.” There is in progress a move¬ 
ment vastly more important than that which is 
the special concern of the higher criticism, and 
that is the total reconstruction of theological the¬ 
ory in fearless logical accord with the truth of 
the Incarnation. 

-fThe coming generation of Christian scholars 
must be alive to the great questions of religious 
thought. They must have a theology; they must 
ascertain what are the realities of the universe. 
If human history is the only path of approach to 
these realities, they must ask what are the ulti¬ 
mate meanings of history. They must find what 
the highest life of the race says of God, — his 
character, his government of the world, his pur¬ 
pose in man, and his whole relation to mankind. 
The cry to-day is for work upon the fundamen¬ 
tals, — for answers to the great final questions as 
to the reality of God, the certainty of his compas¬ 
sionate interest in the human race, and the truth 


168 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


of the high prophetic consciousness that proclaims 
itself the revealer of the Divine Mind. It is as 
builders of the house of the Lord for the believer 
and worshiper of to-day that the coming gener¬ 
ation of Christian ministers must go forth. One 
need not fear a resurrection of the old, finished 
theological system. For that there can be no 
resurrection. The present ideal is not the mediae¬ 
val castle, but the cathedral. It is ever beau¬ 
tiful for worship, great for service, sublime as a 
retreat from the tumult of the world, and it is 
forever unfinished. The staging is never down, 
for any length of time, from every part of it. 
Constructions and reconstructions are continu¬ 
ally going on; the vast historic edifice is fitted 
to the needs of the present hour. This is the 
type for the builder of Christian ideas. He is to 
rear a temple to match the new light, the new 
need, the new age; and it is to be forever uncom¬ 
pleted, a symbol of the unfinished work of the 
Christian intellect, a prophecy of the building 
that is to come, a growing image of the house 
not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. 

This is the work of the Christian thinker, and 
his constructive principle is the mind of Christ. 
Without that guiding truth he can do nothing, 
but with it he can accomplish all things. The 
greatest service of theftigher criticism is that it 
forces the believer from the Bible to Christ. The 
current historical criticism of the Old and New 


CHRISTS TRANSCENDENCE. 169 

Testaments, and the dissatisfaction of the reli¬ 
gious mind with the theologies of the past, and 
the multitude of questions working in the serious 
spirits of the day concerning the whole character 
of Christianity, are serving, in the good provi¬ 
dence of God, to make unmistakable the one cen¬ 
tral and perpetually creative principle in Chris¬ 
tian faith, — the eternal transcendence of Christ. 
This fact is forced upon one by all proper study 
of the New Testament, and by all true insight 
into Christian history. The one heresy which 
the church should forever dread is the identifica¬ 
tion of the mind of the Christian centuries with 
the total mind of Christ. - A Christ totally repro¬ 
ducible in the thought of a Paul or a John, or in 
the entire history of the church on earth, is not 
the Christ of God. To think of the absolute 
reproduction of Christ in the life of humanity is 
to think of putting the ocean into a teacup. 
The fullness of the Infinite is in him, and when 
he becomes immanent, by the power of the Holy 
Spirit, in the life of the world, he will still be the 
flying-goal of man’s love and joyous pursuit, he 
will still remain the eternal transcendent human¬ 
ity of God. 

It may be well to put this principle of the 
transcendence of Christ to test in one great exam¬ 
ple. The Lord’s Supper was a commemoration 
of the death of Christ; it was a form of com¬ 
munion with the living Christ; it was, besides, a 


170 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


sublime anticipation of the return of Christ. “ Till 
he come! ” — these are the words that utter its 
final and infinite meaning. This expectation of the 
return of Christ was founded upon the explicit, 
repeated, and solemn promise of the Master him¬ 
self. Did he keep his promise to his church? 
Was the apostolic expectation of his speedy re¬ 
turn fulfilled? Here is one of the great test 
questions of to-day, the test of faith and of in¬ 
sight. For myself I must say that I believe that 
Christ kept his word to his church, and that the 
primitive anticipation was realized. How other¬ 
wise can one explain the change that passed over 
the character of the eleven? How can one ac¬ 
count for the courage and love and self-denying 
enthusiasm that now possess them? Can there 
be a greater proof of the return of Christ than 
the reconstructed character of his followers? 
Could any bodily appearance amount to evidence 
of this kind? Is not the disinterested mind the 
supreme proof of the presence of the Lord ? And 
there is Pentecost. Is not Peter right in regard¬ 
ing it as the token of Christ’s power? In the 
new religious movement that followed in Samaria, 
must not one see the Master on a second and 
greater journey through that outcast province? 
There is the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The 
vision of the Christ coming in the world is the 
only rational explanation of that momentous trans¬ 
formation of faith and character. There is the 


THE SECOND ADVENT. 


171 


new Christian movement, wide as the bounds of 
civilization, under this apostle and his fellow- 
laborers. Here, again, the meaning of the im¬ 
posing course of events, if it has any, lies wholly 
in the return of the Lord. Thus, with history as 
guide, one may affirm, with the deepest assurance, 
that the Master redeemed his pledge to his disci¬ 
ples, and that the primitive hope was fulfilled. 
-fBut the question comes, Was this the sense in 
which the primitive church believed that Christ 
would return ? The answer is, that it was not. 
The apostolic expectation was that the Lord 
would return in the body within the lifetime of 
the first generation of believers. This was the 
universal form of the faith. The form was 
wrong; the faith itself was profoundly right. 
What is the meaning of this admission? That 
the apostolic disappointment was a divine sur¬ 
prise, that Christianity proved itself vaster and 
more spiritual than even Paul could comprehend, 
that Christ was other and infinitely more than 
the total apostolic mind that set him before the 
world. At the first, Jesus was misunderstood 
by his disciples; later he was misrepresented by 
his countrymen, and through his entire ministry 
he was ever the uncomprehended. Even in the 
happier epoch in the life of the apostles that fol¬ 
lowed the resurrection and ascension, he remained 
other and infinitely greater than their thought of 
him. Stephen’s speech brought new light; Peter’s 


172 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


experience with Cornelius was a personal illumi¬ 
nation; Paul’s profound insight wrought great 
and beneficent changes in the primitive appre¬ 
hension of Christ; and John’s brooding spirit- 
added richness and range to the final apostolic 
conception of the Lord. But what was true at 
the first, is true at the last. The Christ in the 
mind of the New Testament writers is not the 
total Christ of God. If the Lord is what the 
church has from the beginning believed him to 
be, the Eternal in time, it is simply inconceivable 
that either gospel, or epistle, or Christian his? 
tory, or all together, should be an adequate repro¬ 
duction of him. There can never be an adequate 
reproduction. The greatness of Christ must be 
the surprise of the centuries; the last hours of 
time must have for their romance the fresh un¬ 
veilings of his majesty; and the perpetual delight 
of the everlasting future must be the ever grander 
discovery of his significance. When the Master 
becomes immanent in our whole humanity up to 
the limit of its growing capacity, the residue of 
his being will still be infinite. This is the idea 
indispensable to the Christian thinker of to-day. 
With the conviction in his heart of the eternal 
transcendence of Christ, he will be free as an 
interpreter of the New Testament; he will be 
prepared for inadequacy even in the teachings 
of a Paul or a John; he will feel that he must 
become a critic as well as a disciple of Christian 


FAITH AND ITS FORMS. 


173 


history; and he will look to the future with rich¬ 
est anticipations, since the courses of time, like 
the rivers that flow into the sea, can only add to 
the church’s sense of the infiniteness of the Lord. 
The insight obtained into the Person of Christ, 
through the apostolic conception of the second 
advent, yields this great principle. The apostolic 
failure was the apostolic beatitude. It was the 
clear assertion that their Master was infinitely 
more and better than their highest thought. 
Their failure casts no suspicion upon their inspi¬ 
ration ; it simply makes it evident that they were 
finite beings dealing with the Infinite. 

This principle holds, of course, over the entire 
field of belief, and through the whole course of 
time. The apostles were right and wrong at the 
same time in their faith about the return of their 
King. The faith itself was right; the form was 
mistaken. The Christian centuries have been in 
converse with the eternal Humanity of God. That 
is the thread of gold on which the souls of be¬ 
lievers are strung. That is the ground of iden¬ 
tity between the earliest generation of disciples 
and the latest. There has been a positive appre¬ 
hension, an indubitable grasp, of the one Infinite 
Christ; but the modes in which he has been con¬ 
ceived, the forms through which he has been 
known, have ever been inadequate. The revision 
of theological opinion has been constant; the 
process must go on while the Lord the Spirit con- 


174 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


tinues to come in the life of humanity. A the-, 
ology approximately and provisionally adequate ia 
all that one can hope for, — is indeed all that 
one can wish. As the increase in wealth calls 
for a larger treasury, so the accumulation of 
Christ in the consciousness of mankind demands 
more intellectual room. The Lord is at hand, 
and as he comes he changes all things; that is 
the everlasting glory of the Christian faith. And 
no believer can have the courage to be as radical 
as the times require who is without this convic¬ 
tion of the transcendence of his Master. Only 
the man who holds the unreproducible Christ will 
search the evangelical record as it should be 
searched, with utter devoutness and absolute free¬ 
dom; only he will compare the total apostolic 
mind as it appears in the epistles, as the compar¬ 
ison should be made, in the veneration of love 
and in the integrity of the historical spirit; only 
he can traverse aright the vast field of Christian 
dogma, with homage for the reality of the faith 
of all the centuries, and with fearless criticism of 
its various forms; and only he will rejoice to 
anticipate the revisions to which his own opinions 
shall be subjected in the future fuller illumina¬ 
tion from the Lord. Thus far, in modern times, 
the truth of the Incarnation has been used o 



in a negative way, to kill certain forms of belief 
repugnant to Christian feeling. The employ¬ 
ment of it, as the positive constructive force in all 


THE INCARNATION. 


175 


valid Christian thought, has been felt as a neces¬ 
sity only in recent times, and it is not difficult 
to see some of the immediate changes for the 
better which must result from this method of 
theological speculation. 

The truth of the Incarnation, the reality of the 
introduction of the mind of God into the world 
in the consciousness of Jesus, is the creative 
source of all theology. And yet, strange to say, 
the Incarnation, the consciousness of Christ, has 
never been made to yield fully and logically its 
doctrine of God. What one must regret in read¬ 
ing the history of theological opinion is the ab¬ 
sence of a truly Christian conception of God. In 
the highest devotional or confessional literature 
the absoluteness of God is indeed always present. 
When a noble soul has an offering to make, a 
tribute to give to the Infinite, the object of ado¬ 
ration and trust must stand in the vision as 
perfect. / Only toward eternal excellence can the 
intelligent human spirit let out its entire capacity 
of veneration and love and life. One cannot 
behold what Augustine beholds in his Confes¬ 
sions and not join him in utter homage; and one 
cannot see what he sees in his strictly theological 
writings without an irrepressible protest against 
the character of his God. Man’s consciousness 
is at its highest in prayer, in adoration, in abso¬ 
lute moral trust, and out of that should be elabo¬ 
rated, in dependence upon a consciousness im- 


176 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


measurably higher, his doctrine of the Supreme 
Being. Leonidas, the father of Origen, — so the 
beautiful story runs,—delighted with his son’s 
eagerness and aptitude in sacred studies when 
but a child, used to uncover, not his brow, but 
his breast, as he lay asleep, and kiss it as already 
a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit . 1 Here is the 
symbol for the universal conviction of all great 
Christian thinkers. “The heart makes the theo¬ 
logian;” that is, the moral consciousness at its 
highest is the source of the material out of which 
the speculative faculty is to rear its edifice. And 
the criticism must be made upon all the theolo¬ 
gians, from Augustine to the present day, who 
have acknowledged him as their master, that the 
Christian experience in which the true theological 
interest originates, the Christian consciousness 
that is the source of all valid thinking upon the 
ultimate realities of the universe, has had but an 
incidental influence upon the character of belief. 
There can be no doubt that Augustine and An¬ 
selm and Luther, and even Calvin, all began with 
the profoundest and sincerest acknowledgment of 
the absolute moral perfection of God. Our own 
Edwards is perhaps the most conspicuous example 
of this moral origin of theology. His soul was 
kindled into the purest and most passionate love 
through the vision of the infinite and awful 
beauty of his Maker, and under the shaping and 
1 Religious Thought in the West, p. 206, Bishop Westcott. 


TRADITIONAL ORTHODOXY. 


177 


consoling sovereignty of this sublime thought he 
lived his wonderful life. And yet, in the evolu¬ 
tion of theological opinion, these thinkers, who 
began with the open vision of the Highest, defer 
hardly at all to the creative Christian conscious¬ 
ness. This is their common colossal defect; they 
make but incidental use of the consciousness of 
Christ in the determinations of theological opin¬ 
ion. 

They are not wholly without excuse. However 
willing the nobler members of the great group 
might have been to elaborate a better theology, 
the impulse seemed under hopeless condemnation. 
Exegesis was held to be against it, the facts of 
life, and the common notion, that had all the force 
of a first principle, that the redemptive scheme 
was wholly confined to this world. With , all 
the books of the Bible as of practically equal 
authority, texts might be quoted almost without 
number against a nobler theology; and with the 
assumption that the day of grace was limited to 
this world, the awful facts of human history were 
simply incompatible with an optimistic creed. 
Any one who has ever moved within the narrow 
circle of traditional orthodoxy will recall the 
hopeless puzzle that the world presented, — will 
remember how impossible it was to allow an 
important influence, or even seriously to enter¬ 
tain the nobler impulses of the Christian heart. 
The heart was deceitful above all things and des- 


178 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


perately wicked; and, besides, a thousand texts 
could be marshaled, and the whole dark side of 
human history, including all the murderers from 
Cain downwards, and all the traitors from Judas 
Iscariot, and against these witnesses feeling must 
be silenced. 

The generations are now emerging from this 
millennium of sore bondage; they are coming 
from under the vast shadow that has been so 
heavy upon the heart of man into the light of the 
cross. The creative principle of theology is now 
recognized as lying in these words: “He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father .” 1 Too long 
the character of the Father has been at a disad¬ 
vantage as compared with that of Christ. Here 
truly we are indebted to Unitarianism. The won¬ 
derful grasp upon the principle, the reality of the 
Divine Fatherhood that appears in the works of 
Maurice, which have silently revolutionized the 
theology of all parties in the Anglican church, 
he obtained from the Unitarians . 2 This truth is 
now seen to be fundamental; and the high source 
of it is the consciousness of Christ. It is when 
this Supreme Consciousness in time is pressed that 
there is obtained the final characterization of the 
Supreme Consciousness above time; and all texts 
of Scripture and facts of human history that seem 
to rise in contradiction of the absolute goodness 

1 John xiv. 9. 

2 Kingdom of Christ, vol. i. p. 135. 


THE GOSPEL AND REALITY. 


179 


of God must be considered with the mood of true 
science, but with entire emancipation from old 
notions and fears. The crying need to-day is for 
a theology, a working philosophy of life, accordant 
with the deliverance concerning God made by the 
consciousness of Christ. There are still many 
difficulties in the way; but it is believed that they 
are no longer insuperable. At all events, believ¬ 
ers are here face to face with the dread alternative. 
Outside the conventional and comfortable circles 
of belief, the great strain comes at this point. The 
question is not whether Christ is good enough to 
represent the Supreme Being, but whether the 
Supreme Being is good enough to have Christ for 
his representative. John Stuart Mill looks upon 
the Christian religion as the worship of Christ 
rather than the worship of God, and in this way 
he explains the beneficence of its influence . 1 The 
mood is still prevalent among those who view 
nature as Mill did, who perpetuate his warm 
humanity, and who share his solicitude over the 
highest interests of mankind. We must either 
abandon our Christianity as the revelation of the 
Infinite, renounce it as the message of the Eter¬ 
nal, cease to regard it as in any sense a valid 
and trustworthy characterization of the Ultimate 
Reality, or we must go on to the construction of 

1 “For it is Christ, rather than God, whom Christianity has 
held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity.” 
Essays on Religion, p. 253. 


180 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


individual existence and social life, human his¬ 
tory and the universe, by means of its highest 
principle, — the consciousness of Christ. Those 
who are not ready to admit that Christ and the 
nature of things are in final and fatal contradic¬ 
tion, who are not willing to follow the men who 
would make our religion, with its divine vision 
and exhaustless ethical power, only a temporary 
human entertainment within the circles of an 
iron and brutal necessity, a sublime illusion of 
beings under the irrevocable sentence of death, 
a mere interlude between the spasm in which 
all high life originates and that in which it is 
annihilated, must make a new use of the princi¬ 
ple by which they are able to resist a skepticism 
so absolute. The science that has been in the 
ascendant for the last fifty years has been setting 
at variance the creed of Christianity and the 
nature of things. The most influential of these 
scientific leaders, having obtained their ethical 
standards from Christ, and having found them at 
war with the courses of nature, have closed their 
debate with the affirmation that the highest ethics 
have no basis in extra-human reality, — have in 
fact nothing to look for from the Infinite but 
endless hostility. This deduction of the ethical 
scientist should be significant for the Christian 
theologian. It should lead him to raise the ques¬ 
tion whether his religion is but a magnificent 
subjective dream, a wonderful anaesthetic for one 


THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE. 


181 


who must pass under the knife of reality, the fine 
art by which life otherwise in agony beats itself 
into the eternal sleep, or the revelation of the 
meaning of history, the disclosure of the charac¬ 
ter of God. It should lead him to reflect that 
perhaps, if he had made a better use of the great 
constructive principle of Christian faith, if he 
had pressed from the consciousness of Christ 
God’s plan for mankind, he might have carried 
over the whole expanse of human interests an 
illumination so great that these conclusions of the 
ethical scientist would have been impossible. As 
the case stands, theology is as vast and as lurid 
a denial of the objective worth of the mind of the 
Master as the extremest form of modern scien¬ 
tific speculation. Take any one of the great sys¬ 
tems, from that of Augustine to that of the latest 
champion of New England theology, and compare 
it, thought for thought, position for position, with 
the consciousness of Christ, and it will appear 
that if the one is true the other cannot be. The 
result has been that in traditional orthodoxy, the 
highest in Christianity, the absoluteness of the 
Divine Love has always been under the suspicion 
of unreality, while the terrible theology has seemed 
the true version of the ultimate fact. This is not 
said in any feeling of disrespect for the great 
leaders, to whom society at large is under the 
deepest obligations. It is said that the suffer¬ 
ings of our fathers may not have been in vain, 


182 


A SUPBEME CHBISTOLOGY. 


that their vital fight with the Ephesian beasts 
may not prove without profit to their descendants, 
and that the progress which has been the inspira¬ 
tion of all the Christian centuries may acquire a 
new momentum, or, realizing the eternal obstruc¬ 
tion in its path, may vex itself no longer with 
foolish hopes. 

The consciousness of Christ as the authentic 
revelation of the character of the Infinite is the 
great beginning of theology. The present im¬ 
perative call is for the fearless logical use of this 
fundamental idea. Whatever revisions it may 
require in Old Testament teaching, or if need be 
in apostolic deduction; above all, whatever sur¬ 
renders are necessary in the traditional theology, 
— should be cheerfully made . The supremacy of 
Christ is at stake, and nothing must be allowed 
to stand in the way of that. Nothing short of a 
scheme that holds God for humanity can answer 
to the present and logical call. Out of our crea¬ 
tive principle, if it is to be accepted as trustwor¬ 
thy, must come a new working philosophy. The 
world is larger than once it was; history is much 
longer; the enterprise of Christianity is immea¬ 
surably greater, and the vital necessities of the 
case demand a vaster interpretation. The phi¬ 
losophy of Christianity, born amid the wreck of 
the Roman Empire, renewed in the grand contest 
with the corrupt church of the Middle Ages, and 
that seemed adequate to the narrow world of the 


THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 


183 


Puritan, is to-day totally inadequate in view of 
the magnitude of the Christian task. The sense 
of history, and the conviction that Christianity 
has a cosmopolitan mission, are bound to work 
out a new theology, in which the new shall be 
that which was true from the beginning. 

In a general way, it is easy enough to say what 
the ruling philosophy of human life must be, 
where the consciousness of Christ is accepted as 
the measure of the truth. There are but two 
contrasted constructions of the fundamental rela¬ 
tion of mankind to the Infinite. The Augustin- 
ian, the Calvinistic, the Edwardean, has occupied 
the field for fifteen centuries. It is, amid all 
its variations, a partialistic scheme. In it God 
sincerely contemplates only the selection of a 
number; the gospel is not a gospel for mankind; 
the call of the Spirit is not to the race; God’s 
intention includes only a remnant. This is the 
metaphysics of Latin Christianity from first to 
last; its grim logic, avowed or unavowed; its 
horrible finality for the world. A restricted elec¬ 
tive decree; a conception of human nature in 
total dissociation from the Divine, until reclaimed 
by the new creative act of regeneration; a limited 
atonement; irresistible grace for those to whom 
it is given, and their perseverance unto salvation, 
— these ideas form a coherent scheme. Out of the 
choice of the Eternal, restricted to a certain num¬ 
ber, follow in logical sequence the various posi- 


184 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


tions of this partialistic interpretation of man’s 
relation to God. The feeling toward Calvin, that 
so many men of wide acquaintance with ecclesias¬ 
tical history deplore, mainly it would seem on the 
principle of the poet, — 

“ Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 

As to be hated, needs but to be seen; 

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” 

— is, after all, sound and infinitely significant. 
For John Calvin has given the most logical and 
aggressive exposition to the scheme that contem¬ 
plates the salvation only of a part of mankind. 
Modifications of this philosophy of the relation 
of our race to God can never mean much. 4 So 
long as it stands, God is against humanity. The 
modified Calvinist will admit at once that salva¬ 
tion is always by the will of God; and he must 
likewise admit that perdition is by the same 
power. Such is the final philosophical horror 
that the disciple of John Calvin, however modi¬ 
fied, is compelled to face. This is the ultimate 
blasphemy of thought in which our Western civ¬ 
ilization has been, for the most part, living these 
fifteen hundred years. This is the house of faith 
divided against itself in which men of God have 
been dwelling, — the fundamental eternal dualism 
that has become a Niagara current to atheism for 
the serious, and a monumental excuse for excess 
for the foolish. This is the great competitor for 


LOGICAL THOROUGHNESS. 


185 


continued empire over the thoughts of Christian 
men and women; and it is the acceptance or re¬ 
jection of this entire scheme with which believers 
in Christ are confronted. Modifications are a 
mean disguise of the issue; they have become an 
abomination. One will answer the call of the 
human reason and conscience by them as soon 
but no sooner than one can, to borrow the words 
of another, “stop the leak in a frigate with a 
porous plaster.” One of the two contrasted and 
competing constructions of the ultimate relation 
of mankind to the Infinite is the partialistic 
scheme. Under that philosophy men must live, 
ministers must preach, and the church must do 
her work, or under its absolute opposite. The 
tumult of the time has a fundamental philosophi¬ 
cal meaning. The agitation is not simply over 
the higher criticism: it has its deepest source in 
the suspicions as to what that movement, destruc¬ 
tive of the letter of Scripture, may come. The 
extreme conservatives apprehend a theological 
revolution; they are appalled at the prospect of 
a philosophy of Christianity that shall be radi¬ 
cally at war with that which they believe to be 
the truth. Their suspicion is well founded. The 
issue to-day is between the faith that holds God 
for the remnant and that which sees in him the 
hope of mankind. It is not primarily, or even 
necessarily, a difference in eschatology; for es¬ 
chatology concerns only the distant end of the 


186 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


stream of finite being. The question goes to the 
fountain-head of life and faith: it asks for a 
statement of the relation of God to our race; it 
receives two answers, and one of these is the his¬ 
toric declaration that the Eternal is for a portion 
of mankind and against the rest. 

Now, in the case of one who believes that the 
consciousness of Christ is the creative and regu¬ 
lative source of all theology, this partialistic 
scheme must be forever abandoned. For such 
a believer, the universe must be held to be on 
the side of humanity, the whole sweep of the Di¬ 
vine purpose must be conceived as favorable to 
mankind. If the decree of the Infinite is to be 
inferred from Christ, it must be an inclusive 
decree. Some will be first and some last, one 
will be elected to lead and another to follow; but 
all will be chosen for service, all for the beatific 
vision. That many passages may be quoted from 
the Old Testament against this inclusive election 
need trouble no one; for one has only to remem¬ 
ber that the deepest of all Israel’s sins was her 
failure to understand the Divine election. That, 
too, is the limitation to her highest prophetic 
thought, although here and there it is tran¬ 
scended. Many texts may be adduced from the 
New Testament against the idea of a Divine 
choice inclusive of humanity, but these isolated 
passages must be read in the light of the great 
declaration of John: “And this is the message 


THE HOLY SPIRIT. 


187 


which we have heard from him, and announce unto 
you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness 
at all .” 1 If Christ’s mind is authoritative and 
final, if his mission is to the world, if Christian¬ 
ity is the absolute religion, the purpose of God 
must include humanity. This, then, is the first 
great conception that the consciousness of Christ 
yields. God is for humanity, the Creator is on 
the side of his creature. 

From this high conviction that the Infinite has 
a purpose of love and mercy for the entire race, 
a new conception of the sphere of the Holy Spirit 
must result. Narrow views here bring the vari¬ 
ous utterances of the New Testament into hope¬ 
less contradiction. If the Holy Spirit was not 
given, in any measure, until after the ascension 
of Jesus, what shall be said of the affirmation, 
“For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: 
but men spake from God, being moved by the 
Holy Ghost ” ? 2 The promise of the Holy Spirit 
to the apostles and to the church is not of some¬ 
thing absolutely new; it is of a new and final 
form of the Eternal Presence with mankind. The 
career of Christ — his teaching, ministry, char¬ 
acter, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension 
— is the final, absolute form of the coming of 
the Holy Spirit; and in that sense the gift was 
new. But in another sense the Holy Spirit has 
always been in the world since man became man. 

1 1 John i. 5. 1 2 Peter i. 21. 


188 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


The imperishable element in the Old Testament, 
according to all Christian belief, is the product 
of the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew Bible, in so far 
as it contains permanent interest for the human 
soul, and permanent power over human society, 
is the unimpeachable witness that the Spirit of 
God was with men before the advent of Christ. 
If in the Hebrew civilization, why not in the 
Persian, Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian? If 
the sacred books of these various peoples are wit¬ 
nesses to the fact that God has been from the 
beginning speaking to them, why should Chris¬ 
tians hesitate to believe it? The advent into the 
growing circle of scholarship of the religions of 
the world; the sympathetic study of these moving 
and amazing symbols of the aspiration of the 
ancient world; the discovery, in cruder forms, of 
many of the thoughts and hopes and venerations 
that enter into the highest modern faith; and the 
reverent reading of these early chapters in the 
Book of Life, — lead naturally and inevitably to 
the conviction that the age of the Holy Spirit is 
the age of man, and that the sphere of his opera¬ 
tion is our entire humanity. This great modern 
study of the religions of the world is bound to 
result in the belief that the Eternal has always 
been searching the hearts of men. Then, too, the 
whole altruistic side of human life is a witness to 
the same fact. Against pure sensuousness, and 
against mere success as a food-getter as constitut- 


WHAT KEEPS HUMANITY ALIVE? 189 

ing the chief good of man, there has been a pro¬ 
test from the beginning. Ideals of courage and 
friendship and love have been guiding our race 
from time immemorial. A body of morality has 
grown, among every people, proclaiming other 
things than material success to be essential to 
human life. He reads the records of the world’s 
history with blind eyes who does not find there 
the consciousness, however dim and crude, that 
man cannot live by bread alone. The amount of 
altruistic capacity required to run the domestic 
and civic economies of primitive man is by no 
means inconsiderable; the fund of courage and 
friendship by which the ancient world was kept 
going is amazing; and the overwhelming testi¬ 
mony to the presence of God with men to-day is 
not that supplied by the churches. One becomes 
aware of it when one asks, What keeps humanity 
alive? What is the source of the brotherhood 
that is growing the world over, and that, too, in 
the presence of a thousand inducements to an¬ 
archy and brutality? Why is it that the maxim 
of the murderer, Am I my brother’s keeper? is 
being repudiated everywhere, and with a deepen¬ 
ing abhorrence? What keeps the race in even 
its present supply of altruistic feeling? To keep 
our modern world running; to retain even the 
civilization that we have; to insure the perma¬ 
nence of domestic, social, and civic bonds; to 
hold the race from dispersion, and in the power of 


190 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


its true humanity; to enable it to carry forward 
the vast enterprise of life, — the fund of unselfish¬ 
ness and of positive conserving love absolutely 
indispensable is something amazing. Crime and 
vice and meanness and inhumanity are inconsist¬ 
ent with the business of living; they are contra¬ 
dictions of the great human movement, and they 
are the exceptions. The race is not to be judged 
from its criminal and vicious classes, nor from 
its Pharisees. These are the extreme perversions 
of its purpose, the notorious and exceptional ene¬ 
mies of its onward march. The race has a work 
of justice and mercy and humanity on its hands, 
and, poorly as the work is done, the performance, 
such as it is, demonstrates a race alive with God. 
The idealizations of love and patriotism; the ven¬ 
erations of the sympathies and pieties that one 
finds in the songs of Burns, that interpret the 
human heart the world over, and that are abso¬ 
lutely essential even to such social and domestic 
and civic life as mankind possess, — are an im¬ 
pressive attestation of the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit. The saints are, indeed, the crown of our 
humanity; but if, outside the saints, beyond the 
churches, in the swarming populations of the 
extra-Christian world, the Divine Life is wholly 
absent, despair is the only rational mood. It is 
a source of vast annoyance to find in that mag¬ 
nificent roll-call of faith, the eleventh chapter of 
Hebrews, the names of Rahab and Samson. It 


THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 


191 


seems an insult to faitli to suppose that Rahab 
could do anything that needed the inspiration of 
the Spirit of God, or that Samson in the perform¬ 
ance of his feats stood in any relation of depend¬ 
ence to the Divine. But this is simple fastidious¬ 
ness and utter superficiality. The publicans and 
the harlots are candidates for the Kingdom of 
God, because the necessities of their humanity, 
and the work that they have never wholly aban¬ 
doned, keep them open to the Eternal. Man as 
a spiritual being is constituted by the Holy 
Spirit; his nature as man implies the constant 
presence of the Divine, and the total lapse of man 
from God would be the fall into brutehood. In 
the unity of the Spirit, — here is the great crite¬ 
rion. Unity is the supreme witness for the pres¬ 
ence of the Divine. In himself man is a con¬ 
scious personal unity; he rises above the flow of 
sensations, and builds them into the temple of 
knowledge; he transcends the impulses that make 
him the foe of his kind, and constructs an idea of 
good that puts him in fellowship with his kind; 
and out of this fellowship come the institutions 
that mark mankind, — the communion of the 
home, the business cooperation, the combinations 
for the ends of science, and art and philosophy, the 
federation of communities into nations, and the 
gathering of the nations in the church of Christ, 
into the consciousness of humanity. The entire 
stupendous movement is the overwhelming wit- 


192 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


ness to the fact of the universal diffusion of the 
Holy Spirit flowing from the inclusive elective 
decree. 

From this conviction of the universal gift of 
the Divine Spirit, it follows that revelation is a 
fact coextensive with mankind. The heavens 
declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork to all peoples; and the law 
of the Lord, written upon the heart, interpreted 
through the inspirations of genius and embodied 
in decalogue and prophecy and psalm, likewise is 
a universal revelation. The ultimate significance 
of all knowledge concerns the Infinite; and all 
true knowledge, therefore, must be revelation. 
If man cannot live by bread alone, if he requires 
the Word of God, that Word must have been 
present with him, as the provision for his spirit, 
from the beginning; and when the Word became 
flesh and tabernacled among men, it was but the 
grand consummation of the historic process of 
revelation. From the universality of revelation, 
the meaning of regeneration becomes plain. It 
must mean the victorious assertion, through the 
power of the Holy Spirit, of the aboriginal moral 
endowment of man. A high ethical doctrine can 
alone make the profound meaning of this belief 
intelligible. The best introduction to the study 
of it is a course in the ethics of Plato, Epictetus, 
Butler, and Kant. There is a non-sensuous, a 
non-animal, a rational and divine side to human 


REGENERATION. 


193 


life. The fundamental trouble with man is that 
he is not consistent with himself; he is not living 
in accord with the plan of his being. He has 
fallen from a sublime moral unity into a miser¬ 
able dualism; and his problem is the victorious 
assertion of the aboriginal spiritual principle. 
Regeneration is not a new creation in the sense 
of a new endowment: it is the reenthronement 
of the moral ideal, invested with the meaning of 
Christ’s life, and clothed with the authority of 
the Holy Spirit. And the atonement, if it is to 
remain a vital part in the working philosophy 
of a living church, must be gathered from the 
mind of Christ, and construed through the enlight¬ 
ened Christian conscience. Grounds of agree¬ 
ment between God and man, since God is a Spirit 
and man is made in his image, must be transac¬ 
tions in the Spirit. The sacrifice of Christ has 
its meaning here ; it is through the Eternal 
Spirit . 1 

From the inclusive Divine decree there follow 
these positions of faith that have just been named 
concerning the gift of the Holy Spirit, the extent 
of revelation, the meaning of the new birth, and 
the method of approach to the significance of the 
atonement. But one of the greatest changes of 
belief, following from the universal Divine voca¬ 
tion of mankind, concerns the meaning of his¬ 
tory. If the mind of Christ is to be trusted as 
1 Hebrews ix. 14. 


194 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


the true revelation of the purpose of the Infinite, 
history can be but another name for the redemp¬ 
tive process. And history means something im¬ 
measurably greater than it did even fifty years 
ago. The scientific computations respecting the 
length of time that man has been upon this 
planet may amount to no more than guesses, but 
the facts upon which they are based have abol¬ 
ished the traditional guess of six thousand years. 
We must extend the time perhaps to fifty or 
even a hundred thousand years. We have to 
reckon with the stupendous problem that history 
thus extended presents to Christian faith. The 
only possible solution is that which sees in the 
evolutionary process the redemptive movement of 
God. If one believes in a Christian God, one 
must find a Christian interpretation of human his¬ 
tory. It is impossible, without self-stultification, 
to consider the question of salvation only from 
the modern point of view, or to rest content when 
the process is followed back into the civilization 
of Israel. We have a pre-Hebrew, a prehistoric 
world of unimaginable extent and impressiveness 
to confront, a world beside whose populations the 
inhabitants of the entire historic period are but 
as a drop to the ocean. It is incapacity or un¬ 
willingness to face this immemorial past, with its 
countless multitudes of suffering men and women, 
that is tempting Christian thinkers to revive the 
old doctrine of a restricted election under the 


CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY . 


195 


scientific formula of the survival of the fittest, 
and to add to it the new paganism of conditional 
immortality. The past is too great and too brutal 
to bring within the compass of the redemptive 
movement as traditionally conceived; and the 
simplest way out of the difficulty, according to the 
logic of certain writers, is to suffocate these mul¬ 
titudinous swarms of prehistoric humanity, tak¬ 
ing good care to preserve for our own pious uses 
whatever honey they may have hived, in the way 
of laborious invention, noble custom, sacred insti¬ 
tution, and sweet conquest over the wild forces 
of nature. In return for the immeasurable bene¬ 
fits which we have inherited from the prehistoric 
world, we are asked to exclude them from the 
elective decree, and to add to that the new dogma 
of conditional immortality. If this is not a near 
approach to cannibalism, one would like to know 
what is! The courage and the capacity to face 
this new problem that history sets before the 
church to-day are necessities of the life of Chris¬ 
tian faith. And, as has already been said, there 
can be but one solution. The redemptive process 
must include the whole historic movement. Time, 
with its entire content of humanity, must be the 
subject of that process of salvation whose con¬ 
summate expression is the cross of Christ, and 
whose origin is in the Eternal Fatherhood. 

There are two serious questions raised by this 
view which keep many persons from embracing 


196 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


it, and which must now be noticed. The first 
comes when one considers the low moral average 
of human life, especially in the heathen world of 
to-day, and under the ancient civilizations. When 
one thinks of the swarming populations of man¬ 
kind, of the masses that live almost wholly 
outside the religious sphere, of the crowds that 
cannot he said to lead even a conventionally 
moral existence, of the mighty populations that 
are still in the swamps of animalism, and who, 
judged by an ideal ethical standard, have little or 
no worth for one another, it is difficult to regard 
their history as a redemptive process; it is hard 
to cover them with the purpose of the Eternal. 
Relief comes when one remembers that humanity 
has its value chiefly for God. It touches his 
compassion; it appeals to his wisdom; it calls out 
his Fatherhood; it moves him to undertake for it; 
it becomes in its helplessness one vast mode of 
realizing, in an historic process, the love and the 
pity of the Infinite. The several thousands of 
infants in any large city have no immediate value 
for one another. If they were brought together 
into some great room, one would give to another 
no sympathy, no help. The chief immediate 
value of these infants is to their parents, their 
friends, the older generation, and the human 
heart of the city where they live. They cry out 
for help, they develop sympathy, they move pity, 
they elicit a great body of tender love, they give 


MAN CONCERNS THE INFINITE. 197 

realization to man’s fondest dreams, and convert 
into character, through a vital process, some of 
the richest and deepest forces in the soul. It is 
no slight, therefore, upon these helpless lives, to 
say that they are of value chiefly for humanity; 
and it is no libel upon humanity to affirm that it 
has worth mainly for God. The hosts of toilers 
and sufferers, fighting for existence amid the hard¬ 
est conditions, caring nothing for science or liter¬ 
ature or philosophy, and having little time even 
for religion, cannot be said to possess any clear, 
developed, deliberately wrought out, established 
moral character. Such morality as they have is 
largely instinctive; and ethical worth is not the 
conspicuous merit of mankind either in prehis¬ 
toric times or in the best historic periods. The 
differentiating mark of human life is that it con¬ 
cerns the Infinite. No man lives unto himself, 
and no man dies unto himself; that is, every man 
lives and dies unto the Lord. Man’s supreme 
relationship is to the Eternal, his final accounta¬ 
bility is to God, the ultimate significance of his 
entire existence reaches to the Divine conscience. 
And therefore a man’s wrong-doing can never be 
mere brutality. His lie, his lust, his cruelty and 
sordidness, cannot be a mere repetition of the 
cunning, the foulness, the fierceness, and the dull 
indifference to truth and beauty and moral ideals 
that one finds in the brute. Man’s wrong-doing 
is never simple brutality; neither is it mere 


198 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


crime, something done against the law of the 
state; nor is it only vice, something done in con¬ 
tempt of the social sentiments of the commu¬ 
nity. It may be brutal, vicious, criminal; but 
it is infinitely more. It is sin; it is done against 
God. So, too, man’s error is not the mistake of 
an animal; it is the wandering of a child of God. 
Human thoughts are the concern of the Absolute 
Mind, as human acts are the concern of the Abso¬ 
lute Conscience. It follows that man’s sufferings 
are not merely so much pain endured by crea¬ 
tures of flesh and blood, confined in its meaning 
to this poor world, in whose markets the agony 
and bloody sweat of souls has not even a quota¬ 
ble value. The American nation never could 
have passed through the great slavery agitation, 
never could have gone through the war with its 
terrible drain upon sympathy, treasure, and blood, 
if there had not been lodged in the national heart 
the conviction that the whole tragic movement 
concerned the Almighty. That conviction gave 
dignity to its error, momentousness to disloyalty, 
solemnity to the national purpose, and an infinite 
sanctity to the sacrifice through which the coun¬ 
try was redeemed. Another great consequence 
of the belief that man has value chiefly for God 
is human as opposed to restricted immortality. 
Why is it that the oceans that lie so loosely upon 
the unprotected outside of the planet do not leave 
it and pour in wild floods through space? Be- 


ESSENTIAL SONSHIP. 


199 


cause they lie so close to its heart, and move 
within the sphere of its motion; because they are 
fastened to their places, and made an everlasting 
part of the earth through its ceaseless revolutions. 
The planet must stop, or break into fragments, 
before these oceans can be displaced or lose their 
life. And in the same way humanity stands 
within the compass of God’s thought, lies within 
the circuit of his love, dwells in the very move¬ 
ment of his spiritual power, and is thus forever 
swept onward in his companionship. Constitu¬ 
tional sonship to God is the basis of human 
immortality; when this becomes moral sonship, 
assurance becomes much greater. But moral son- 
ship, that is, actual sympathy with God’s purpose 
on man’s part, is available only for the merest 
handful of souls. If that doctrine is true, hu¬ 
manity goes to wreck, and only a feW leading 
spirits, the captain and officers of the stupendous 
sunken craft, are saved. In view of the length 
and fullness of human history, in the presence of 
the consciousness of Christ as revealing the char¬ 
acter of God, such an opinion is simply incredi¬ 
ble. It is conceived in utter isolation from the 
problem, and born in the wilderness of despair. 
It is a sufficient answer to those who fail to cover 
humanity with the Eternal purpose, and who 
refuse to regard history as the process of redemp¬ 
tion because of the low moral average of human 
character, and of the sins and crimes that have 


200 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


flooded the courses of time, to say that mankind 
from its worst to its best, apart from the Divine 
Man, has worth chiefly for God. The worst per¬ 
son in all history is something to God, if he is 
nothing to the world. 

The second question is more serious still. If 
one shall regard history as but another name for 
the redemptive process, and if one shall set that 
process utterly free from the limits of space and 
time, must not moral disaster result from a plan 
of salvation so latitudinarian ? It is believed 
widely that restrictions upon the sinner’s oppor¬ 
tunity are necessary to bring him to his senses, 
and that to assure him of an unlimited opportu¬ 
nity is a sop to the traitor within him. Now I 
believe that the principle of salvation, or admis¬ 
sion into the kingdom, can take care of itself; 
that no breadth or narrowness of theological 
thought can touch it; and that it is absolutely 
independent and self-sufficient. 

The principle of salvation gains nothing from 
a narrow theology. One may speak of the uncer¬ 
tainty of life, affirm the momentousness of the 
change of death, declare that there is no evidence 
that any soul ever passed from evil to good on 
the other side of the grave, draw in the blackest 
forms the retributions of the future, pile up the 
lurid metaphors until those who listen feel as if 
they were on a journey with Dante through his 
Inferno, and one will not have added, in the 


SALVATION ETHICAL. 


201 


slightest degree, to the weight and solemnity of 
the bare salvation principle. Salvation remains 
utterly, sternly, eternally ethical, and more than 
that one cannot say. It ik as exhibitions of the 
ethical nature of the blessed life that the grand 
retributive metaphors of Christ have a meaning 
so awful. The worm that never dies, the fire 
that is unquenched, the utter darkness full of 
weeping and gnashing of teeth, all tell of one 
thing, — the horror of unrighteousness, the woe of 
a state which is the negation of love, the torment 
of a mood which is the affirmation of falsehood 
and iniquity. One cannot make the globe weigh 
any more than it does weigh. One might carry 
the Alps to India, and the Himalaya to Switz¬ 
erland; thereby one will alter the proportions of 
Europe and Asia, but one will add nothing to 
the mass of the world. One may call imagina¬ 
tion into the service and pack into this old earth 
a hundred other planets. The work of imagina¬ 
tion may be sublime; but when genius has thus 
exhausted its strength, the world will weigh no 
more and no less than when the mighty effort 
began. Christ’s salvation no man can add to. 
There is but one salvation, and that is righteous¬ 
ness. No man can get it in any world without 
an agony and a bloody sweat, and whoever is 
outside the moral movement into the likeness of 
God in Christ, in this world and in all other 
worlds, is outside salvation. That man is in hell. 


202 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


But if the sublime and self-sufficient principle 
of salvation cannot possibly gain anything from 
a narrow theology, it may lose much in pop¬ 
ular thought. Its great issue may be obscured. 
When Lincoln said that this nation could not 
remain half slave and half free, that it must 
become a country with slavery everywhere or 
nowhere, he defined the issue for the whole peo¬ 
ple. The great debater refused to go afield into 
the ten thousand subtleties and sophistries of the 
slaveholders’ position. He simply presented the 
radical, unalterable issue. If he had piled round 
it party politics, hung it with the drapery of the 
wildest stump oratory, and mixed it with a ques¬ 
tionable political creed, he would have done inex¬ 
pressible harm to his great cause. He would 
have obscured the issue. And this is done when¬ 
ever a mediaeval theology is invoked to strengthen 
the motive to repentance and faith in Christ. 
One thing only can be accomplished in that way: 
the grand issue can be confused. Salvation will 
sink in the popular mind into a bargain with 
God through assent to certain propositions, into 
a contract with him through physical fear, into 
a partnership such as prudent men may think it 
well to establish. Salvation will become a sort 
of insurance policy, the premium to be paid in 
church-going, the benefit to be immunity from 
the evil consequences of an intenser and more 
unscrupulous materialism than even men of the 


THE BROADER THEOLOGY. 


203 


world dare attempt. But if the issue be defined 
as Christ defined it, as simply and eternally a 
question of righteousness, no soul can mistake it. 

On the other hand, it must be said that nothing 
can be taken away, by a broader theology, from 
the relentlessness of the moral process of salva¬ 
tion. The Christian thinker of to-day has won 
his freedom to regard God as the Father of all 
men, to conceive of him as eternally interested in 
the whole race; and to remove all limits of place 
and time from the redemptive scheme of Christ. 
He has the right to affirm, if he solemnly believes 
it, that, on this side of death or on that, God 
and Christ and the moral universe are unchange¬ 
ably the same; that all the Divine punishments 
are chastisements; that God’s final purpose in 
scourging his children is to bring them back to 
himself; and that even in hell the worm must 
gnaw and the fire burn in the service of the 
Eternal Grace. 

But all this breadth of belief does not and can¬ 
not change the unalterable nature of salvation. 
The words of Moses to Pharaoh are in point 
here: “ As soon as I am gone out of the city, I 
will spread abroad my hands unto the Lord; the 
thunders shall cease, neither shall there be any 
more hail; that thou mayest know that the earth 
is the Lord’s. But as for thee and thy servants, 
I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God .” 1 

1 Exodus ix. 29, 80. 


204 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


A merciful God did not mean a converted king; 
a changed divinity left a self-identical oppressor. 
One may change one’s conception of the Supreme 
Being from Moloch to our Father in heaven, from 
the destroyer to the Saviour of mankind; but until 
one shall agonize in the conflict with passion, and 
through heroic suffering put on the form of right¬ 
eousness, there can be no improvement. The 
thunders and hail of one theology may give place 
to the sweetness and light of another; but if the 
oppressor still remain the oppressor, the sinner 
the sinner, there is no gain. The moral order of 
the world is an ultimate fact. The law of en¬ 
trance into the kingdom is the law of struggle, 
and it is a final necessity for every man. Below 
everything are manhood and womanhood. What 
is the character of human purpose and endeavor 
judged by the career of Christ? That is the ulti¬ 
mate question. The great conservative principle 
of Christian theology is the righteousness with¬ 
out which no man can see the Lord. To call 
one a Christian who is without righteousness, or 
the reasonable hope of it, can do one no good; he 
is outside the kingdom. On the other hand, to 
affirm that the opportunity to become righteous 
is eternal can do no harm if the thing itself be 
defined as the possession, through an eonian woe, 
of the mind, the heart, the character of Christ. 
When the grand issue is defined as the possession 
of the righteousness of Christ, the interests of 


AN ADEQUATE THEOLOGY. 205 

morality, and the motives toward the strenuous 
life, are safe. 

Thus the consciousness of Christ as the crea¬ 
tive principle in theology yields a God for human¬ 
ity. It covers the entire race with the purpose 
of the Infinite; it interprets the moral ideal¬ 
ism that is inseparable from mankind into the 
universal presence of the Holy Spirit; it finds 
among all peoples traces of that revelation of God 
which becomes absolute in Christ; it looks upon 
history as but another name for the redemptive 
process; and it removes from this process all 
limits of place and time, because it sees that sal¬ 
vation is a principle utterly independent. Here 
the creative principle is joined by the conserva¬ 
tive. This is a righteous universe, God is a 
righteous God, and there is no salvation to any 
soul, in any world, without participation in the 
righteousness of God in Christ. All that is 
great in the progressive movement, and all that 
is essential in conservative belief, need but to be 
put under the supremacy of Christ to insure their 
fruitfulness and permanence in human thought 
and character. No theology can be great enough 
that is not derived from the consciousness of the 
Lord, and no interest of mankind is unsafe if it 
is in his keeping . 1 

1 ‘ ‘ Where was the refuge from the miserable alternative (of 
Greek pantheism or Hebrew transcendence) for them ? Where 
is it for us ? 

“ I believe, my brethren, only in the recognition of a Filial 


206 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


III. 

Individualism and socialism are but parts of 
the truth taken for the whole. Neither is alto¬ 
gether false; neither is entirely true. Each, 
when pushed to its extreme logical expression, is 
the destruction of the grand reality of human 
belief and life. Pure individualism makes the 
reality of the universe impossible. According to 
it there can be no unity in which all things are 
centred, no common fountain of being from which 
all particular life flows. The metaphysics of 
individualism is atomism; its psychology is naked 
sensationalism, psychic life minus the soul, the 
impressions and ideas of Hume going through 
their customary and inexplicable evolutions; its 
ethics, unmitigated self-seeking. Absolute indi¬ 
vidualism is the contradiction of all being, all 
knowledge, and all reality. Of this form of 
opinion, whether as a doctrine of the universe or 
of man’s life, Christianity is the eternal antago¬ 
nist. This fact is likely to be obscured by the 


Word, one with that Father who is above all, speaking through 
all things; in the world, as St. John says, which was made by 
Him though the world knew Him not; actually God and yet 
with God. Thus is the dream of Greek pantheism substan¬ 
tiated ; thus is it reconciled with the sternest Hebrew faith in 
God as absolute and as distinct from all his creatures; thus 
are we saved from the heartlessness of an all-excluding the¬ 
ology, and from the equal heartlessness of an all-comprehending 
philosophy.” F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. vi. p. 104. 


KIDD'S “ SOCIAL EVOLUTION 


207 


wide and favorable reception accorded to Ben¬ 
jamin Kidd’s “Social Evolution.” The vitiat¬ 
ing defect of that vigorous book is its individ¬ 
ualism. The radical contradiction of the work 
lies in its moral socialism superimposed upon 
extreme philosophic egoism. Professor Drum¬ 
mond has contested Mr. Kidd’s interpretation of 
nature, and most readers will think that he has 
done so in the interest of truth. Nature is not 
the realm of wild and unmitigated egoism that 
Mr. Kidd seems to believe it to be. Parentalism 
is in nature, and that is but another name for 
altruism. The struggle for life is not everything; 
there is a struggle for the. life of others. Fur¬ 
ther, the selfish struggle is dependent for success 
upon the unselfish; the battle for existence would 
defeat itself in a single generation were it not for 
the recruiting power of the battle for the exist¬ 
ence of others. But the second step in Mr. 
Kidd’s discussion is still more extraordinary, as 
seen in his notion of human progress . 1 The sum - 
mum bonum is simply the gratification of appetite. 
The means of physical subsistence is the great 
object of quest. The ideal is, What shall we eat, 
and what shall we drink, and where withal shall we 
be clothed ? The biological problem, or one half 
of it, the battle for life against a multitude of 
competitors, is carried up and becomes our whole 
rational problem. Progress is naked material- 

1 Social Evolution, ch. iii. 


208 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


ism, without even the fig-leaves of scientific, 
aesthetic, and philosophic interest to serve as a 
partial covering. If Mr. Kidd had seen both 
sides of the life of nature, if he had observed 
there the parentalism as well as the egoism, his 
biological importation would have been very dif¬ 
ferent. He would then have been able, in strict 
fidelity to biological science, to define human good 
as having in it, under its common forms, intellec¬ 
tual, aesthetic, and moral elements; as made up 
not only of food and clothing and shelter, but 
also of a longing to give and receive love and 
sympathy, of a confederated endeavor after truth 
and beauty and righteousness. The biological 
summum bonum is not simply life, but life in the 
wonderful mutualism of the family and the tribe; 
and the chief good of man cannot be lower, must 
be higher. The next step in Mr. Kidd’s pure 
individualism is exhibited in his treatment of rea¬ 
son. Nature means the struggle for existence in 
lower animal forms; progress means the success¬ 
ful battle for life among the higher animal forms, 
that is, among mankind; and reason is simply 
the faculty that mirrors the interest of the hu¬ 
man Ishmaelite, and that urges him to strengthen 
his hand against all the other hands that are 
raised against him. An unmoral nature gives 
birth to an unmoral man, and the unmoral man 
seeks an unmoral good under the sanction of an 
unmoral reason. It is plain that Mr. Kidd’s 


REASON ESSENTIALLY MORAL. 209 


reason needs to be converted, as it is evident 
that his idea of progress needs to be enriched and 
transformed, and his conception of nature cor¬ 
rected . 1 Reason is the source of our ideals of 
truth and beauty and goodness, the fountain of 
the whole altruism actual and possible in human 
life; it is the creative centre of all fraternity in 
the discovery of reality, of all sympathy in the 
vision and enjoyment of the beautiful, of all 
brotherhood in the duty and privilege of social 
existence. Reason is the absolute contradiction 
of individualism , 2 the blessed mother of the forces 

1 “ The question all turns on what we conceive to be the essen¬ 
tial nature of man. Is he essentially a bundle of animal appe¬ 
tites and passions, supported for a little while by a framework 
of bone; wrapped up for a season in a blanket of flesh ; lighted 
by a flickering candle of intelligence, just sufficient to show him 
the objects by which he may gratify these animal appetites and 
passions ? If the appetites are the man, and intelligence is his 
adjunct and instrument, then indeed the antagonism between 
such an individual and society is, as Mr. Kidd tells us, hopeless 
and irreconcilable; and the only hope of getting social conduct 
out of him is some ‘ ultra-rational sanction ’ which shall startle 
him into a wholesome fear of penalties, or shock him into a pru¬ 
dent concern for his fate in the hereafter. Such an abstract 
individual, such an animal in human form, however, nowhere 
exists. It is a fiction of the imagination to which no real being 
corresponds. Unus homo, nullus homo (One man is no man at 
all).” President Hyde, Social Theology, p. 46. 

2 These words were written before the appearance of President 
Hyde’s admirable book, Social Theology; it is, however, comfort¬ 
ing to be supported by an independent witness of his strength. 
“Reason is the bond that binds mankind together.” Social 
Theology, p. 47. 


210 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


that declare man to be needful to man, that bind 
life to life and all to the Infinite. Knowledge is 
possible only because reason converts the indi¬ 
vidual things of sense into orders and classes 
and kingdoms. Abolish reason and the universe 
becomes an atomic universe with no soul, no 
society, no God anywhere, and with no need for 
them. Mr. Kidd’s idea of the irreducible con¬ 
flict between individual and social good is a 
nightmare following upon a late and heavy and 
too exclusive meal upon Humism. It rides him 
into horrors, but then the horrors are imagi¬ 
nary. The postulate of the moral life is, that the 
true good of all involves the true good of each. 
Christ was not robbed when he was crucified, and 
the penitent thief found the summum bonum upon 
the cross. Every man worthy of the name would 
brand himself as a coward and a slave if he 
should define his good as exclusive of that of his 
fellow-men, and he would pass upon himself this 
sentence of condemnation, in every civilization of 
which the record remains, and in the name, not 
of an “ultra-rational” religion, but in the simple 
dignity of reason itself. There was a time when 
the theologians were the great dealers in the mon¬ 
strous dogma of total depravity; now scientific 
writers are carrying on the trade. 

This is the philosophic foundation upon which 
Mr. Kidd builds his social religion; and it is the 
overwhelming conviction that upon such a basis 


INDIVIDUALISM AND FAITH. 


211 


there is room for no religion whatever, that must 
turn the believer in Christianity into an uncom¬ 
promising antagonist of the philosophy of this 
remarkable book. The insight which the volume 
embodies into the process of social development, 
and its profound recognition of religion as the 
ultimate power in all human progress; the per¬ 
tinent and important criticism that it contains 
upon the attitude of contemporary science toward 
the deeper problems of life; the sign of the times 
that the discussion is; the token that the former 
things are passing away that one must see in it; 
and the prophet of the new century with its fresh 
gift from God, — cannot reconcile one to the un¬ 
disguised Humism of its philosophy, or mitigate 
one’s opposition to a work that provides no basis 
for religion in the nature of ascertainable real¬ 
ity. Humism is logical individualism, and its 
outcome is nihilism. 

The other extreme is socialism, which in its 
turn disregards an essential part of ultimate real¬ 
ity. It loses sight of the reality of the individ¬ 
ual. Its metaphysics is pantheism, one Eternal 
Being prevailing over all, disregarding all. In 
human affairs society is this sole being, whose 
absolutism is, from the opposite extreme, the 
destruction of humanity. These are the two ex¬ 
tremes, the Scylla and Charybdis, between which 
the human race must sail. For “neither social¬ 
ism nor individualism can, with any propriety, 


212 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


be accepted as the true form of social organiza¬ 
tion, or its doctrine identified with sociology, or 
the science of society .” 1 

It is impossible, however, for any right-minded 
man to withhold sympathy from the causes out 
of which socialism, as a doctrine of reformation, 
is born. The most deplorable of the contrasts 
that exist in human society are those which con¬ 
cern life itself. When one looks into the exist¬ 
ence of the extant savage of to-day, the first 
thing that impresses the beholder is the meagre¬ 
ness of his life. History means next to nothing 
to the savage; he is instructed and consoled by 
no access to the memory of mankind. The past 
does not gather for him like clouds about the 
setting sun; it has no romance of tenderness and 
no fund of beauty from which to feed his heart. 
Neither has he any ennobling sense of the future. 
He has no consciousness that he is living at the 
daybreak of the world, no feeling that under his 
eyes the spring of an eternal hope is rising; he 
is without the strength and courage that come 
from science; he has no interest in art; the 
worlds of music and poetry are for him non¬ 
existent ; and to the greatness that comes of hold¬ 
ing and living under a noble consistent thought 
of the universe he is an absolute stranger. He 
lives largely in his appetites, in his unformed 
instincts, in barbaric customs. The contrast ap- 
1 Socialism, Flint, p. 19. 


MAN SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED. 


213 


pears at once when one places beside this savage 
a representative of our better modern life. The 
first thing noticeable in this man is the expan¬ 
sion and richness of his interests. His sense of 
history is a constant source of comfort, and his 
anticipation of the new eras that are coming is 
likewise an unfailing force in his heart. He 
looks before and after, and in a noble sense pines 
for what is not. His worlds in space and in 
time are very grand, and his imagination is under 
the incessant and magnificent appeal that comes 
out of the vast past behind him and the great 
sky over him. Through the instrumentality of 
books, he walks with the men who lived at the 
dawn of the world, when the morning stars sang 
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. 
He migrates with Abraham, leads Israel out of 
bondage with Moses, is rapt with Isaiah in the 
vision of the Eternal, goes abroad with the psalm¬ 
ists when their hearts are full to hear them break 
into song, listens to Jesus on the Mount of Beat¬ 
itudes, and keeps company with Paul and John 
in their great thoughts and enterprises. Or, 
striking out into another mighty civilization, he 
lives in the wondrous beauty of Homer’s world; 
walks the streets of Athens in the age of Pericles; 
opens his life to the appeal of wisdom, eloquence, 
art, poetry, and a thousand rich and splendid 
interests. Following his human sympathies, he 
sees Rome founded, looks upon Caesar and Taci- 


214 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


tus; wends his way down the long, dark mediaeval 
world; is present at the birth of the modern era; 
hears Dante sing; beholds Michael Angelo build 
and Raphael paint; witnesses the magnificent 
pageant that Shakespeare puts upon the stage; 
and enters into the new thought, the new science, 
and the vaster life of to-day. The contrast be¬ 
tween the life of this representative of our better 
modern civilization and that of the savage is 
simply overwhelming. 

Now, it is the consciousness of this contrast 
existing within the bounds of civilization that is 
the deepest cause of the unrest and the wild 
socialism of the time. Take, for one member of 
this contrast, one of our wealthier church mem¬ 
bers in a great city. His home is in the best 
part of the city; he has the means to make it 
beautiful; he is able to invite into it those who 
bring with them intelligence, refinement, and 
sympathy; and he can do for his children all that 
it is good for them that he should do. He has 
had an education, and that gives him a certain 
mastery of the world. He commands an annual 
revenue that, a few centuries ago, would have 
made even kings happy. He has books, and con¬ 
siderable leisure to make their acquaintance. 
Works of art meet his vision almost every day 
of his life, and he is under the perpetual stimulus 
of elevated friendships. He has the church of 
Christ, with its unspeakable history, with its 


THE CONTRASTS IN LIFE. 


215 


power to purify and strengthen the heart, and 
with its sublime interpretation of the universe 
and of man’s place in it. How abundant and 
desirable existence is in the case of this man! 
Look, however, upon the other picture. Think 
of the home in the worst section of the city; the 
absence from it of the things that refine and 
uplift; the bare presence of the food essential to 
keep soul and body together; the mother fighting 
sickness without help, and battling without suc¬ 
cess against the uncleanness that besets her poor, 
wearied and worried life at every step; the father 
working from morning to evening, year in and 
year out, without any prospect of catching up 
with his obligations, under the strain of toil, the 
harrow of disappointment, the iron despotism of 
circumstances, the poverty and meanness of his 
lot. What is history to him but a dead past? 
What is the future but a place that holds within 
it a quiet grave, for whose peace he would often 
thankfully exchange his present painful, ineffec¬ 
tual struggle? Science means nothing for him 
but a new invention making his work less indis¬ 
pensable. By art he understands something that 
idle fools talk about. Now and then, indeed, a 
song of other days reaches his heart, and gives 
him the comfort of a few tears. The Divine 
scheme of the universe appears to him a mock¬ 
ery ; or it seems to have left him and his pale- 
faced, pathetic children and their poor mother 


216 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


outside of its beneficent movement. His uni¬ 
verse seems an Inferno, and existence itself a 
curse. Thus in the tremendous contrast in the 
human life of the civilized world is born the rage 
of those whose lives are reduced to a shadow and 
a mockery against those whose lives are rich and 
full, and who are utterly heedless of the multi¬ 
tudes whose hearts are wrung every day. In old 
Athens, the rock on whose top sat the court of 
the Areopagus, representing the highest reason 
and the best character of the Athenian state, had 
underneath it the Cave of the Furies. 1 The rock 
that had a summit so noble and a base so terri¬ 
ble, that held within its extremes the home of a 
benign order and the Cave of the Furies, is the 
symbol of the appalling contrasts that meet one 
in the life of mankind to-day. It is not primarily 
a question of money, or position, or work, or 
leisure; it is fundamentally a question of life. 
In one class life is rich and full; in another it is 
destitute, afflicted, tormented. This is the con¬ 
dition that everywhere arrests the eye of the 
beholder, the condition that is producing the agi¬ 
tations and social earthquakes of our century.^ 
Now Christianity meets this defect of life with 
the gospel of life. Christianity is the coming of 
the Divine Life as revelation, as power, as the 
form of the Infinite Love. The first great need 
is light, revelation of the Divine plan of society. 

1 Socialism, Dr. Hitchcock, p. 7. 


BROTHERHOOD AND SONSHIP. 


217 


Through the career of Christ, the true order for 
man is made to appear. Masterhood and ser- 
vanthood are not abolished; inequalities of en¬ 
dowment and acquired capacity remain; fitness 
for the various functions of society continue as 
diverse as ever; the human world still resembles 
the natural in its elevations and depressions. 
But there is discovered a new relationship in 
humanity. It is the great commonplace of bro¬ 
therhood supreme over all inequalities and diver¬ 
sities, and working out through them a richer 
and vaster life for the social whole. This com¬ 
munity of brothers, some of whom have five tal¬ 
ents and some but one, and all of whom are 
under the sternest obligation to improve and 
increase what has been committed to them, stands 
under the fatherly government of God. Human 
lives rise into heaven, they appear before God, 
they are under his Fatherhood, the subjects of 
his discipline and compassionating, redeeming 
love; and they are interrelated one with another, 
each with all and all with each, as are the trees 
in a great forest through the intergrowth of roots 
and the interlocking of branches. Under the 
industrial order is the moral order of human 
life; under the questions of trade are the ques¬ 
tions of humanity; beneath the forms of the 
business world lie the immutable facts of human 
brotherhood and the Divine Paternity. 

This is the first step to be taken in answer to 


218 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


the social need of the time. The primary ques¬ 
tion is one of light, of revelation. What is the 
true order for human beings, and how are they 
related one to another according to the ultimate 
facts and forces of the case? Man is defined 
both by the Christless capitalist and the wild 
socialist in terms of industry. The thought of 
both moves wholly in the materialistic sphere. 
There is so much wealth, that is, articles which 
are useful and which possess exchangeable value, 
produced every year, and the problem is simply 
one of distribution. The whole fight is carried 
on in the realm of the material, and for the exe¬ 
cution of its purpose it must look to force. And 
not infrequently the combatants change sides. 
The insolvent capitalist becomes the crazed social¬ 
ist; the successful laborer leaves the ranks of 
socialism, and is transformed into a tremendous 
individualist. The battle is, as has been well 
said, between the Haves and the Have Nots. 
Those who have, want the present order to go 
on; those who have not, would like a change. 
Meanwhile failure of one of the haves turns him 
over to the side of the revolutionists; and success 
of one of the have nots, puts a stop to his wild 
speech, and carries him quietly over to the con¬ 
servatives. The truth of the whole matter ap¬ 
pears very clearly in the answer of the Scottish 
Highlander to the question of his former party 
leader. Said the agitator, “You used to be a 


CHRISTIANITY AS SOCIAL ORDER. 219 


tremendous radical, and now you are an immov¬ 
able conservative: will you be good enough to 
give the reason for this revolution in your opin¬ 
ion?” The reply was, “Nothing is easier; I 
have now a croft and a coo.” 

While the problem is thus understood, pro¬ 
gress toward the settlement of social difficulties 
is impossible. It is here that Christianity comes 
to the rescue. It converts the industrial question 
into the moral question, the problem of trade into 
the problem of humanity. It refuses to regard 
men as simply creatures of the seen and temporal, 
mere animals with a capacity for business, and 
whose social arrangements are necessarily made 
with an eye to the selfish advantage of one class 
over another. It persists in regarding them as 
brothers in a grand community of duties and 
privileges, and under the providence and moral 
discipline of a common Eternal Father. It 
preaches the reality of the kingdom of God as 
giving the ultimate order for human existence. 
Behind all institutions civil and ecclesiastical; 
back of all forms of trade whether competitive or 
cooperative, under the entire life of mankind, is 
the moral order that includes all men in one 
brotherhood subject to the Divine Fatherhood. 
The questions of capital and labor, the problems 
of industrial and social forms, must be carried 
out of the lower courts of mere materialism where 
they are at present being tried, and where deci- 


220 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


sions that are settlements never can be had, to 
the supreme tribunal of humanity under the sov¬ 
ereignty of the Divine Paternity. The appeal 
of the workman must not be to the humanity of 
the capitalist while he retains his own selfishness; 
nor must the capitalist appeal to the humanity 
of the workman while he keeps his hardness of 
heart. Both must go out of the lower court into 
the higher, from animalism to manhood, from 
the bitterness of enemies into the mood of Chris¬ 
tian brotherhood. If the social quarrel is that 
of dogs over a bone, there is absolutely no hope 
of just settlement; the strongest dog will get the 
bone every time, and the rest will have only the 
comfort of howling. The ascension of all parties 
to the fight into Christian humanity is the indis¬ 
pensable preliminary of the moral adjudication 
of the case. 

But Christianity not only brings light; it also 
supplies the power of realization, and that is per¬ 
haps the deepest need of human nature. The 
lines of the Greek poet tell the tale: — 

“ Oft have I lain awake at night and thought 
Whence came the evils of this mortal life ; 

And my creed is that not thro’ lack of wit 
Men go astray, for most of them have sense 
Sufficient, hut that we must look elsewhere. 

Discourse of reason tells us what is right, 

But we fall short in action.” 1 

1 Euripides Hippolytus, lines 375-381, Goldwin Smith’s trans¬ 
lation. 


IDEAL AND ACTUAL. 


221 


A good creed does not always carry with it a 
good character. Ideals, even where they are gen¬ 
uine, are very different from realizations. Many 
have the revelation of duty who do not possess 
the power of obedience. The government of our 
great cities is admirable upon paper, but in fact it 
is one of the scandals of the civilized world. The 
abstract, constitutional, paper creed of New York, 
Boston, and Chicago is doubtless very good; the 
fitting and faithful embodiment of the excellent 
symbol in municipal administration is another 
matter. Every patriotic American believes that 
in theory he lives under the best government in 
the earth; but if he is familiar with the history 
of politics and the conduct of the public service, 
he must often feel how immeasurably below the 
ideal promise is the actual fulfillment. This 
statement does not imply that the discrepancy 
between personal, municipal, and national creed 
and performance comes of insincerity and hypoc¬ 
risy. The state of things that one now beholds, 
one can imagine to exist, in less aggravated 
forms, without the intervention of intentional 
widespread knavery. The truth is, personal right¬ 
eous living is a difficult task; the just and pure 
administration of the affairs of a great city is a 
perplexing problem; and the wise and beneficent 
control of the interests of a mighty nation is a 
tremendous tax upon the resources of human 
nature. 


222 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


This line of remark inclines one to patience 
with the present order of society, whose working 
results in great inequalities, in shocking forms of 
injustice, in outrageous inhumanities. To man¬ 
age a world, to control the enterprise of mankind, 
to govern the industrial activity of the whole 
earth, is a stupendous undertaking. It is no 
wonder, when one considers human limitation, 
that incidental outrages occur. The engineer 
cannot always stop his train in time, strikes a 
carriage crossing the track, and hurls to death 
a whole happy household; a captain is unable 
always materially to slacken the momentum of 
his ship as it emerges from the fog-bank with 
another crossing its bows, and so the unfortunate 
craft ahead is cut into two and sunk, perhaps 
with all on board. Much more must this be the 
case when it is a question of the control of the 
whole social movement. It is so immense, is 
under such momentum, and requires so much 
intelligence and power to handle it, that it is no 
wonder that the vast leviathan occasionally runs 
down whole fleets of interest and just claims that 
happen to cross its bows. It is for the greatest 
man, backed by the greatest people, a tremen¬ 
dous task to govern; and the perfected form of 
human society man is at present unable to frame, 
nor is he equal to the best use of the imperfect 
form under which he lives. 

All this makes evident the need of society 


MORAL DYNAMICS. 


223 


for the second great message of Christianity, — 
power, moral dynamics. A perfect social scheme 
is not self-operating, and in the management of 
it, as men now are, they would make as big 
blunders as they do to-day. A circular saw is 
an almost perfect instrument for turning trees 
into timber, and yet it is an instrument whose 
operation may well inspire fear. It will go 
through a finger or a foot, an arm or a leg, the 
body or the brain, with the same remorseless ease 
and celerity with which it goes through a log of 
wood. Schemes for the righteous control of the 
sum total of human life are one thing, the abso¬ 
lute management of them is another. The truth 
is, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the only ade¬ 
quate hope and help for man. The social prob¬ 
lem is but the personal and domestic magnified 
and more complex. The power that reaches and 
renews the heart is the grace of the Infinite 
through Jesus Christ. There is such a thing as 
the leadership of God, 1 and that is given through 
the person and career of Christ. The personal¬ 
ity of Christ is the form for the coming of the 
moral power of the Infinite; and it is this power 
that men need for personal conduct, domestic 
peace, national righteousness, and victorious hu¬ 
manity. 

1 The important bearing 1 of leadership upon the social problem 
was admirably discussed by Dr. E. Winchester Donald in bis 
lectures before the Lowell Institute for 1895. 


224 


A SUPBEME CHBISTOLOGY. 


Here again, and in connection with the sorest 
troubles and deepest interests of the race, the 
supreme divinity of Jesus discloses its signifi¬ 
cance. There are these maddening contrasts of 
life in the heart of society. They are reflected 
upon and discussed popularly, only as effects of 
an industrial order; they are not traced to their 
source in man’s inhumanity to man. Christianity 
'meets the social difficulty at this point. It brings 
a revelation of the true order for human beings, 
and through the Person of the Revealer it intro¬ 
duces the moral power of the Infinite. Now in 
this connection the deity of Christ is the assur¬ 
ance that the order which he proposes for man is 
the order which God proposes and in which he 
lives. Christ gives his conception of the king¬ 
dom, his thought of mankind, standing in a com¬ 
munity of brotherhood under the Divine Father¬ 
hood; and the conception, the thought, through 
his leadership, has had and still possesses elemen¬ 
tal power. It is indeed the new creating force in 
human society. Its power is conditioned upon 
belief, upon the open heart and the ready spirit; 
and that power will become immeasurably greater 
if men should be able to hold that the scheme 
and influence of Jesus have the universe on their 
side. The ideals of socialism are often not far 
from the truth; they are frequently but crude 
versions of Christ’s idea of the kingdom of love. 
The question comes, Where are human beings to 


GOD FOR HUMANITY. 


225 


look for the power to realize these ideals ? Mr. 
Kidd writes eloquently of the stock of altruistic 
feeling with which the race was endowed some 
two thousand years ago, and which is still unspent. 
What one wants to know is, Who thus stocked 
our Western civilization? Is Christ’s scheme a 
chimera, or the true and ultimate interpretation 
of human life ? and is the Infinite, in whom lies 
the whole menace or hope of man’s existence, for 
or against the Christian programme? The old 
faith in the deity of Christ is of the utmost sig¬ 
nificance for the purified ideal of socialism. 
That sublime belief beholds in the Godhead the 
ground of human society, its plan, its creative 
source; and the dynamics of the Eternal Life 
that will at last make the heavenly communion 
of Father and Son and Holy Spirit actual in 
the earthly brotherhood. The city of God must 
descend out of heaven. The socialistic ideal is 
doomed if it has the universe against it. Ethics 
that mean nothing beyond time and space, pro¬ 
posals for human improvement that are vetoed 
by the Absolute, decrees for man’s amelioration 
that collide with the decree of the Eternal, can 
have but one issue. The Christian thinker of to¬ 
day surveys with the socialist the outrages that 
result from the operation of the present form of 
social arrangements. He looks with the deepest 
sympathy upon the whole sad condition of the 
vast majority of mankind. >He believes in the 


226 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


advent of a new earth wherein righteousness is 
to dwell, and for the coming of this kingdom of 
love he counts it a privilege to labor and live. 4 . 
But the magnitude of the task, and the difficul¬ 
ties besetting it, would overwhelm him in despair 
if he did not possess Luther’s faith. 

“ Did we in our own strength confide, 

Our striving would be losing, 

' Were not the right man on our side, 

The man of God’s own chosing. 

Dost ask who that may be ? 

Christ Jesus, it is he : 

Lord Sabbaoth is his name, 

From age to age the same, 

And he must win the battle.” 

The hope of the reconstruction of human society, 
apart from the support of the Infinite Life, is the 
emptiest dreams Out into this Infinite, up into 
the aboriginal eternal fellowship in the Godhead, 
the belief in the deity of Christ leads. It be¬ 
holds in the Godhead the plan for human society; 
it links the human world to the divine by a cord 
that cannot be broken; and it supports the grand 
historic movement upon the ever - brightening 
social ideal with the sympathy, the decree, the 
nature of the Absolute. 


IY. 

The force of the grand historic conception of 
the Person of Christ, as a weapon against mate¬ 
rialism, must not be passed over in absolute silence. 


THOMAS HILL GREEN. 


227 


Materialism as a theory of the universe is to he 
met, of course, upon its own ground. What pro¬ 
fesses to live by logic must die by logic, if it is 
to die at all. Whatever comes in the name of 
reason must receive its warrant of life or death 
from reason alone. A philosophy that grounds 
man’s existence upon a supposed external physi¬ 
cal or non-mental order must be challenged and 
vanquished by a philosophy that founds human 
life upon the Infinite Spirit. And this has been 
done to a demonstration, in the judgment of the 
vast majority of competent students, by the ideal¬ 
istic philosophy of Germany, as that has been 
expounded and critically applied by British think¬ 
ers of the last quarter of a century. The great 
and abiding service that Thomas Hill Green per¬ 
formed for English thought consists in his final 
showing that, if Humism is to be the dominant 
philosophy, nihilism must be the result. For 
society and ethics and science and knowledge 
itself there is absolutely no basis in that system 
of thorough-going individualism. Never before 
in the history of speculation in Great Britain has 
a similar final piece of critical work been done. 
Others have cooperated with Green at the com¬ 
mon task of leading the British mind to com¬ 
prehend the philosophy on which it was building 
the interests of the nation and mankind, but for 
thoroughness and demonstrative force his achieve¬ 
ment is monumental. The popular scientific 


228 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


writers who are proud to trace their speculative 
descent from Hume, and who have stood in pub¬ 
lic estimation as the advocates of materialism, or, 
what amounts to the same thing, who have traced 
human life to a non-rational origin, have prac¬ 
ticed upon themselves and upon the multitudes of 
their readers a lamentable imposture. They have 
been the most talkative gentlemen of their time, 
when, according to the fundamental principle of 
their philosophy, they should have been dumb. 
To the coming generation of thinkers there will 
be something pathetic in the career of a man like 
Mr. Huxley. He and those who have labored 
with him for the diffusion of knowledge will pass 
into history, as the unconscious children of a phi¬ 
losophical tradition, — as men who took their spec¬ 
ulative beliefs from Hume, as good Catholics do 
from the church, without once suspecting that 
the beliefs, if true, made science itself impossi¬ 
ble, without dreaming that the issue of their mas¬ 
ter’s principles was absolute nihilism. For their 
accomplishments as students of physical science, 
for their zeal in sharing the brilliant results of 
their investigations with the public, and for their 
power as masters of the English tongue, these 
men deserve great respect. But as philosophic 
thinkers they have been, as I have already said, 
both for themselves and their followers, a lament¬ 
able imposture. Their triumph in this depart¬ 
ment has been largely owing to the general igno- 


APOSTLES OF IDEALISM. 


229 


ranee upon the ultimate problems of thought; 
and they remind one of the dying Welsh clergy¬ 
man who impressed his illiterate English attend¬ 
ants with his command of Hebrew and Greek 
by interjecting in his talk with them sentences 
from his mother tongue, which the poor man him¬ 
self confounded with the original languages of 
the Old and New Testaments. It is matter for 
deep regret that the philosophic answer to Hum- 
ism, and to every system that derives human 
knowledge and life from a non-rational source, 
should exist in a form only intelligible to schol¬ 
ars. We need apostles of idealism who shall be 
able to conceive their gospel in a vivid and vital 
manner, who shall have the gift of sympathy 
with the intellectual needs of the masses of intel¬ 
ligent people, and who, by the superb and attrac¬ 
tive forms in which they are able to invest their 
philosophic faith, shall lift it into popular sover¬ 
eignty. What is already dead for the insight of 
the thinker should not be allowed to continue its 
imposition upon the multitude. 1 I am far from 
believing that idealism in its present shape is the 
final philosophic gospel; but I cannot help think - 

1 Mr. A. J. Balfour’s book, The Foundations of Belief, con¬ 
tains a brilliant application to Naturalism of the negative side 
of Idealism. The author seems to forget, when he comes to 
treat of Idealism, that for his triumph over Naturalism he is 
indebted to that school of thought. His criticism of Idealism 
is brilliant and suggestive, but hardly goes to the root of the 
matter. 


230 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


ing that, if its profound and vital thoughts were 
made a living part of the national consciousness, 
there would be a revival of righteousness, ethical 
passion, and hope, such as this country has never 
witnessed. For the philosophic student of our 
time, these thoughts are among the 
“ Truths that wake 
To perish never; ” 

and the call is for a whole army of apostles to 
hold forth these words of life, and vindicate for 
the multitude the consciousness that existence has 
a noble and an unfathomable significance. 

However, as a practical argument, nothing is 
so bewildering and ultimately overwhelming to 
materialistic opposition as the idea of the Incar¬ 
nation as realized in Jesus Christ. Even on the 
lowest possible ground, — on the basis of belief in 
Jesus as nothing more than the wisest and best 
man that ever lived, — the conception which his 
career embodied possesses an incalculable power. 
Admitting him to be nothing more than the tran¬ 
scendent man that all competent unbelievers are 
forward to confess him to have been, still his life 
is the sovereign practical argument against that 
degradation of the worth of human existence in¬ 
volved in materialism. For the question comes, 
What did this wisest and best man do with his 
life? Did he spend it in bewailing the lot of 
humanity? Did he fill the days, and after him 
the centuries, with mere melodious sorrow over 


CHRIST'S ATTITUDE TOWARD ■ LIFE. 231 


the brevity, the emptiness, the tragedy of human 
existence ? Did he exhibit his scorn for the igno¬ 
rant masses by holding aloof from them? Did he 
regard them as dumb driven cattle, and was this 
verdict pronounced by his teaching and endeavor ? 
If, indeed, this wisest and best man had summed 
up his judgment of human life in terms of min¬ 
gled pity and contempt, in words that reveal 
what a poor thing he held it to be, in expressions 
which showed his deliberate opinion to have been 
that it was a hopeless evil, — a mistake to be 
born, a boon to die, — optimists would find it 
impossible to make headway against an obstacle 
so stupendous. But there must be a return to 
the question, What did this supreme man do 
with his life? He went about doing good. He 
spent it in the service of the criminal, the vicious, 
the outcast, the vast weltering masses of aban¬ 
doned humanity. He took his life, with its super¬ 
lative wisdom and goodness from his baptism to 
his crucifixion, and gave it in one continuous 
sacrifice in attestation of his sense of the worth 
of the human soul. The life of Jesus was equally 
his offering to the Infinite and his tribute to the 
dignity of man. Even on this lowest level, on 
the simple recognition of him as the wisest and 
best of mankind, the force of his judgment for 
the worth of the human spirit, uttered through a 
career of unparalleled devotion, is sufficient to 


232 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


paralyze the strongest forms of materialistic be¬ 
lief. In hours of depression, therefore, when 

“ Our light is low 

When the blood creeps and the nerves prick 
And tingle, and the heart is sick, 

And all the wheels of being slow,” 

when the confidence of reason is for the moment 
shaken, and the whole scheme of thought that is 
the support of Christian faith seems but transfig¬ 
ured mist, the fond creation of human longing and 
love and the order of the universe looks hollow, 
godless, brutal, reduce Christ to the lowest terms 
possible, take him simply as the superlative man, 
and ask what he did with his life. The material¬ 
istic notion that makes human life worthless 
makes the career of Christ folly, his exertion in 
behalf of ignorance and helplessness fanaticism, 
his cross mournful, unmitigated, eternal waste. 
If human existence is meaningless, the career of 
our best man is lunacy. If we curse humanity 
we crucify the Lord afresh, and put him to an 
open shame. Pessimism is impossible in the 
presence of Christ. 

But assume that the consciousness of Christ 
represents the consciousness of God, and we rise 
to the true level. Here is the human race toiling 
up the long ascent from brutehood, living through 
the unrecorded ages a life of inconceivable strug¬ 
gle; it emerges into history, and becomes able 
to record its sufferings because they have been 


CHRIST AND EVOLUTION. 


233 


reduced to manageable compass. Next come the 
vast empires of force, and under them the con¬ 
viction is born that existence is vain. At a 
given point of time, not without the noblest prep¬ 
arations, not only in one race but in all associated 
races, One appears who represents the mind of 
the Eternal. The whole scene is changed. Suf¬ 
fering then becomes the revealer of the path of 
life, and the impulse to walk therein; the unre¬ 
corded ages of labor and sorrow are converted 
into a sublime assent of mankind in response to 
the Divine election; the long and tragic drama 
of history takes the form of an evolution of the 
purpose of God in the education of humanity. 
The advent of Christ as the accredited represent¬ 
ative of the Infinite thus makes unmistakable 
the august significance of life. The movement 
of mankind remains wild and terrible, but a pur¬ 
pose is seen subduing it. The path of progress 
is still an agony and a bloody sweat, but there is 
no waste; every ounce of pain, every hour of 
darkness, is made to contribute to the mighty 
advance, serves to bring out the glory of the 
receding goal, and is converted into richer and 
vaster being on the way. The Christian concep¬ 
tion of the Incarnation, clearly understood, con¬ 
stantly entertained, and allowed free play over 
imagination and feeling, will utterly annihilate all 
opposing forms of thought, and create an optim¬ 
ism that nothing can exhaust. No philosophy at 


234 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOG Y. 


war with human interests can as much as gain 
a foothold in a mind and a community under the 
ascendency of the consciousness of Christ as the 
consciousness of God. To such a mind and com¬ 
munity, such a philosophy becomes incredible 
and inconceivable. This is part of the meaning 
of the profound apostolic resolve to preach Christ. 
It is to employ, in behalf of the world that works 
and suffers, that has no time and no talent for 
abstract thinking, an engine of power that will 
never allow even an invasion of the great and 
beautiful expanses of faith. 

V. 

Upon Christ the human race must ever be 
dependent. In the last analysis, the reason of 
this is that Christ is not something external to 
humanity, but first the true Incarnation of its 
eternal prototype in the Godhead, and second 
the very divinity with which its spirit is consub- 
stantiated. The coming of Christ means the 
awakening of humanity to its ideal and divine 
side; and his departure would signify the aban¬ 
donment by the race of sonship to the Father in 
heaven. The rejection of Christ is the expulsion 
of the divine from human thought and concern, 
the disowning of all the ties that bind this earthly 
existence to the Infinite, the degradation of life 
to the animal level, and the rigid confinement of 
all its activities and interests within the godless 


THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


235 


and soulless categories of sense and time. Hu¬ 
manity thus stands or falls with the acceptance 
or rejection of its King. The Christ, universally 
disowned by life as well as by thought, would be 
a humanity dead; while the Christ universally 
received would be humanity lifted to the summit 
of its privilege, and in the happy realization of 
the end for which it was created. 

The true relation of mankind to the Lord Jesus 
is not grasped until he is regarded as the Incar¬ 
nation of the Eternal Humanity in which the 
race is constituted. The philosophy of the Pro¬ 
logue to the Fourth Gospel is essential to the 
understanding of the advent and career of Jesus. 
There is eternally in the Godhead a rational, 
creative humanity, and in that divine humanity 
our race is constituted. In the Eternal Word, 
who became flesh in Jesus, men live and move 
and have their being. The Eternal ideal human¬ 
ity and the historic fact meet in the prophet of 
Nazareth. The Eternal thus manifests himself 
through the divinely human career, and, after the 
history is made which forever renders impossible 
the denial that the ideal is the real, the Eternal 
returns to his pre-incarnate fullness and univer¬ 
sality. The historic Jesus is the revelation, the 
attestation, the demonstration of the Divine 
Sonship in which men were chosen before the 
foundation of the world. That Divine Sonship, 
forever identified with the history of the unique 


236 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


man, is life and breath and all things for man¬ 
kind. 

The personal conscience is the great witness of 
this high relationship in the case of the individ¬ 
ual. The poor actual of creature life and the 
awful ideal of the Creator’s character are hinted 
at by the conscience of the savage, are given in 
more and more impressive forms as it rises in en¬ 
lightenment. The conscience is the true Jacob’s 
ladder set in the heart of the individual and 
reaching unto heaven; and upon it the angels 
of self-reproach and self-approval ascend and 
descend. The capacity for righteousness is the 
conscious possession of the normal man, and the 
discrimination between right and wrong, good 
and evil, is but the working within the spirit of 
the Infinite Christ. The power of the historic 
Christ to quicken the conscience depends upon 
the essential relation of that organ of the soul to 
the Eternal Christ. The consciousness that there 
is an ethical meaning to man’s choices and acts, 
that his career is the subject of moral judgment, 
that the significance of his thought and behavior 
reaches beyond time and space, that his being is 
bound up with the Infinite, is the profoundest 
import of conscience, and it is the whisper within 
him of the Word of God. The modern con¬ 
science is the creation of the historic Christ, but 
this creation would have been impossible had not 
man been constituted in the Eternal Christ. 


THE LOVER AND THE IDEAL. 


237 


The public conscience, as it stands expressed 
in the institutions and lasting literatures of the 
world, is the irresistible social witness to the 
fact that humanity is organized in the Lord the 
Spirit. The ideals in the veneration of which 
the normal young man and woman contemplate 
marriage and enter into that state; the feeling of 
the mother for her firstborn, and the true father 
for his home; the final cause of all education; 
the supreme purpose of government; the insight 
and love and faith of mankind as enshrined in 
literature; and the institutions that represent the 
aspirations of the spirit, — all mean nothing un¬ 
less we assume that the race is in perpetual con¬ 
stitutional converse with the Eternal Humanity. 
Mephistopheles calls the lover “a sentimental 
sensualist,” and, if one shall adopt his spirit of 
denial, one must subscribe to his conclusion. If 
love is but a physical passion, its ideal is but 
the glow of its lurid fires upon the clouds of 
imagination. If the physiological movement is 
the only reality, the lover can never be other 
than “a sentimental sensualist.” But if the stir 
in the physical nature is but the occasion of the 
emergence of the ideal, the storm which it is to 
calm, the chaos which it is to subdue into order 
and beauty, the material forces through which it 
is to find consummate human utterance, then the 
lover is one who is looking upon the face of the 
Eternal Humanity. Purity and sensuality are 


238 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


here seen in their infinite contrast. Purity is 
the lover following his ideal into the humanity 
of God, convinced that it is the everlasting real¬ 
ity, and returning with it to govern the divine 
days of engagement and the diviner years of 
wedded life. Sensuality is contempt of the ideal, 
the degradation of it to the mere romantic effect 
of physical passion upon the imagination, the 
denial that home and its sanctities are amenable 
to the Infinite Holiness. The sensualist, whether 
refined or foul, is the worst enemy of mankind. 
He is the fiendish unbeliever, the denier of the 
divine significance of human existence, the apostle 
of atheism, egoism, and filth. The normal lover, 
on the other hand, is the herald of the ideal, the 
revealer of the heavenly side of man’s nature, 
the witness of the Infinite Christ; and, so long as 
the lover does not fail from among men, so long 
will the belief prevail that the race is created in 
the Son of God. 

There are two alternatives before the parent as 
he looks with indescribable tenderness and fond¬ 
ness upon his children. He may attribute his 
parental passion either to blindness or to insight. 
He knows that the world does not regard his 
children as he does. He would be ashamed to 
tell even his friends how much he thinks of them. 
He is sure that the most sympathetic among them 
would fail to enter into his mood. Now, one of 
two things must be true, — either the cold, un- 


RESULT OF INSIGHT. 


239 


sympathetic world is right about this man’s chil¬ 
dren, or the world is wrong and the father is 
right. Is parental fondness the result of insight 
or blindness, the outcome of the deeper apprecia¬ 
tion of human life, or the effect of its silly ideal¬ 
ization? The normal person will at once admit 
that parenthood means insight, and that admis¬ 
sion carries the significance of child-life, and in¬ 
deed all life, to the Divine thought. The mood 
of true parenthood is but the working in an 
earthly home of Christ’s vision and passion for 
humanity. If the parental insight and feeling 
are true, they have the universe on their side; 
they are lifted into the thought and sympathy of 
the Infinite; they are a witness that the home, 
under another aspect, is ordered in the strength 
of the Lord. The same is true of men in the 
relations of trade and citizenship and humanity. 
There is an ideal guiding the wise in all these 
orders of existence, and it guides evermore to the 
cradle of Christ. So long as men cry out for 
justice and sympathy in trade, for wisdom and 
righteousness in government, and for brother¬ 
hood in humanity, so long will there be the pres¬ 
ent day revelation that human society is in con¬ 
verse with the Eternal, that it is organized in the 
Lord the Spirit. As for literature, it is man’s 
homage to the ideal enshrined in forms of imper¬ 
ishable beauty; it is but another name for his 
faith in the fathomless significance of life, and 


240 


A SUPREME CHRISTOLOGY. 


the conviction that the source of its greatness 
lies in everlasting dependence upon the Divine. 
Moral idealism is the most persistent fact in the 
history of man, and it must be one of two things, 
— the proof that the race is under a standing 
delusion, or that it is living in the Eternal Hu¬ 
manity of God, that Humanity which became 
Incarnate in Jesus Christ. 

This mystic union of the Lord and the race, 
which has everything on its side, if there be a 
spiritual world at all, and a God answering to 
the necessities of the case, is a familiar thought 
in the New Testament. There is the Master’s 
beautiful image of the vine and the branches. 
The consciousness of a common life, of a life 
prophetic of an end, of a life in the realization of 
its end, — that is the fact humanized. Out of 
the vine comes the stream of vitality; it goes on 
increasing in the branches, disclosing its purpose 
more and more clearly; it comes at last to the 
ripened fruit. The consciousness of a divine life 
issuing from the Christ with whom men are 
united, the prophetic increase of this conscious¬ 
ness, and its movement upon a glorious ethical 
end, — this the thought of the mystic dependence 
of man upon the Master as expressed in his own 
teaching. Paul’s image is that of the human 
body. Of that body Christ is the head. The 
apostle’s figure does not cover, and it was not 
meant to cover, the total relation of mankind to 


THE KEYSTONE IN THE ARCH 241 

the Lord; but it does exhibit impressively the 
organic union, the inseparableness of living hu¬ 
manity from the living Christ. Until one sees 
this essential dependence of the race upon its 
Divine Head, the full meaning of the Incarna¬ 
tion cannot be grasped. Christ is the keystone 
in the arch of humanity. Without him it is 
incomplete, and cannot for any length of time 
bear the burden of its own weight, to say nothing 
of the service to which, in the courses of his¬ 
tory, the Master Builder may turn it. But in 
Christ the race becomes conscious of its power; 
its inherent strength passes from member to 
member; and the more it is pressed by the weight 
of life, the closer it is joined in common duty, the 
compacter it becomes in lofty fellowship, and 
the grander the development of its utilities for 
the purposes of God. 




CHAPTEK IV. 


CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


" T]fxe7s be Kripiacofiev Xpiarbv ecrravpcafxevov,'lovbalois p.ev <tkAv- 
8a\ov eQveeriv 8e ptooplav, avrois 8e rots kXtjtois, ’I ovbalois re Kal 
V E\ \ri(riv, Xpicrrbv deov bvvapuv Kal Oeov <ro(plav.” — 1 Corinthians 
i. 23, 24. 

“ But about the life and saying's of Jesus there is a stamp of 
personal originality combined with profundity of insight which 
. . . must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation 
of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first 
rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can 
boast. When this preeminent genius is combined with the 
qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr 
to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be 
said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the 
ideal representative and guide of humanity.” — John Stuart 
Mill, Essays on Religion, pp. 254, 255. 

“ For it is plain that if Christ be dead, he could not be expel¬ 
ling demons and spoiling idols.’ ’— Athanasius, The Incarnation, 
chap, xxxii. 4. 


CHAPTER IV. 


CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

That which in the second chapter was a Chris- 
tological interpretation, and which in the third 
chapter became a theological principle both crea¬ 
tive and conservative, now becomes the supreme 
homiletical method and power. As in Mendels¬ 
sohn’s “Hymn of Praise” there is first the fact 
of the victory of light over darkness at the crea¬ 
tion, then the prophetic significance of this single 
triumph, and lastly the wonderful artistic achieve¬ 
ment, so in this discussion the Divine Christ 
becomes the prophetic Christ, and both are con¬ 
summated in the Christ of power. An historical 
character truly interpreted yields a working phi¬ 
losophy of the universe, and that becomes a mes¬ 
sage for the preacher, and upon his lips presses 
for triumphant utterance in the life of mankind. 
Thus the modern pulpit has a large task on its 
hands, — a task that must mean for all genuine 
preachers a magnificent opportunity. Still the 
very greatness of the opportunity must create a 
certain noble solicitude, must tend to press the 
preacher back upon the Infinite inspirations. It 


246 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

was the habit of Jesus, in the midst of his work 
and face to face with his opportunity, ever recip¬ 
ient although he was of his Father’s help, peri¬ 
odically to retreat upon the life of God. It was 
a custom with him, after caring from morning 
to evening for the sick and the ignorant and the 
sinful, to retire at night into some mountain 
apart, and there enter into the heavenly commun¬ 
ion and replenish himself out of the bosom of 
the Eternal through solitary prayer. It must be 
remembered that the transfiguration occurred in 
the night; that it took place after a day of ex¬ 
hausting labor in the heart of boundless and be¬ 
wildering opportunity; that it was while he prayed 
that the fashion of his countenance was changed, 
and his raiment became whiter than the snows of 
Hermon, and his head more glorious than the sun 
at noon; and that perhaps it was but one of many 
similar expressions of the unlimited presence of 
God in his soul, as he retired from the world and 
threw his wearied humanity wide open in a sweet 
and awful trust to the Infinite Spirit. There is 
a divine philosophy in these sacred experiences of 
the Lord. The world was a stupendous practical 
problem to him, and work meant a victorious cam¬ 
paign against ignorance and brutality and persist¬ 
ent wrong-doing. The call was ever loud for 
reinforcements. It was thus the pressure upon 
him of his work, it was the grandeur and ardu¬ 
ousness of his task, that constrained him thus to 


THE RETURN TO CHRIST. 


247 


return to his Father. And it is one of the better 
signs of the times that everywhere in the church 
of to-day the representative and leading minds 
are returning to Christ. Behind the critical 
activity concentrated upon the New Testament is 
the deep-seated desire to move through apostolic 
opinion and idiosyncrasy, through evangelistic 
prepossession and habit, through every likely or 
possible accidental accretion, as close as can be to 
the pure and august word of the Lord. Those 
who fail to discern this longing as the controlling 
force in all the nobler New Testament scholars 
will be sure to misunderstand their spirit and 
misjudge their work. Back of the new school of 
ecclesiastical historians lies the same great im¬ 
pulse. Those who have undertaken the great 
task of historical analysis, of separating into its 
different strands the record of the Christian 
church, who think they are able by the subtle 
chemistry of insight and scholarship to eliminate 
from faith the alien heathen elements, and to 
bring into conspicuous singleness the creative 
spirit of Christ, are doing so, that they and their 
brethren may have over them only the authority 
of the Master. The appreciation of their purpose 
must beget patience with these historians in what 
seems destructive work. Their motive is nobler 
and greater than their method, is infinitely richer 
and wider than their somewhat provincial outlook 
upon the world of thought. They are animated 


248 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

by nothing less than the passion to come face to 
face with the Mind out of which Christian civil¬ 
ization, in all its worthy phases, has grown, and 
whose presence in human history is the force 
creative of all progress and all hope. So, too, 
those who are interested in a new theological habi¬ 
tation for faith, who seek emancipation from the 
bondage of mediaeval opinion, who want the mod¬ 
ern world of life in all its richness and compass 
to be mastered by adequate ultimate conceptions 
of God and man, are on a deep return to Christ. 
The longing for the true word of Jesus, the desire 
to reach the creative mind underlying Christen¬ 
dom, the hunger for help in the task of interpret¬ 
ing the world and its life, is the great motive in 
the characteristic criticism, historical research, 
and theological construction as at present carried 
on by Christian scholars. The ultimate problems 
of reason are so difficult, the final questions of 
faith are so urgent and perplexing, that along a 
score of different lines Christian thinkers are 
returning to their Master. It is felt more and 
more that there can be no substitutes in creeds, 
in church authority, in patristic tradition, in 
apostolic interpretation, for him, and that without 
him there can be no solution of our human prob¬ 
lem. 

The preacher must join in this sublime return. 
His question is primarily one of moral dynamics, 
and it can be met, as to-day it requires to be 


THE HEAVENLY VISION. 


249 


met, only by a new and profounder sense of the 
meaning of Christ in the spiritual training of 
mankind. Paul’s career as a preacher must be 
dated from the heavenly vision of the risen, reign¬ 
ing, and infinite Lord, the vision to which he 
was not disobedient. His consciousness of the 
living Christ to whom he belonged, to whom he 
surrendered himself, and for whom he claimed 
the Jew and the Greek, the bond and the free, is 
the creative source of his mighty ministry. *4 That 
amazing vision was the head-waters of his whole 
career; he lived out of its perennial inspirations, 
refilled his heart from its exhaustless fullness, 
and, through a service almost unparalleled in its 
many-sidedness and devotion, carried the signifi¬ 
cance and moral power of his Master to the ends 
of the world. For Paul the only adequate inspi¬ 
ration of the preacher was the living, reigning, 
infinite Christ, and the only adequate work of 
the moral teacher of men was revealed through 
the same Life. Paul was born with a hunger 
for righteousness, and he had sought it by fol¬ 
lowing such ideals as Judaism could set before 
him. This method of search, however, brought 
him no peace. The ideal was not great enough 
to melt him into penitence, to transform him into 
love, and to run his whole being into the moulds 
of the Divine righteousness. Despair began to 
settle down upon him, and that sort of despair 
which is most destructive of humanity, — moral 


250 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

despair. Fanaticism came to his rescue, and 
gave him a brief experience of delusive hope. 
In the midst of this trouble, the vision found 
him, set before him the old ideal of righteousness, 
now magnified and outshining the sun, and clothed 
his spirit with the power of moral attainment, 
pressed all his powers into the great and endless 
pursuit, and hung in his imagination the image 
of the far-off crown of rectitude which he now 
saw would one day be put upon his head. It 
was worth while to follow a Master who could 
thus change the heart and begin in it the deposit 
of eternal life. One who could thus reveal right¬ 
eousness and confer the power of progressive 
attainment must be accepted and served as Lord. 
And the object of the great acceptance and ser¬ 
vice is thus defined. The world lies in wicked¬ 
ness, and yet it is hungry for the strength and 
consolation of moral self-respect. The apostle 
saw, what every preacher must see, that the deep¬ 
est need of the human heart is the need of recti¬ 
tude. Without this wealth, position, influence, 
learning, genius, high material civilization is but 
a city built upon a bog. It must sink into eter¬ 
nal insignificance in the mud and filth of unright¬ 
eousness. The summum bonum is the problem, 
not primarily of philosophers, but of humanity, 
and the vital search that does not lead to personal 
rectitude ends in the bitterness of the Dead Sea. 
Paul’s Christ still concerns the preacher, not only 


THE ETERNAL PREACHER. 


251 


as adequate inspiration, but also as defining his 
work. His is the message of righteousness, so 
full of ideal splendors as to overawe and win the 
heart, so instinct with moral power as to renew 
the imbecile will, stir it to persistent endeavor, 
and keep it in the great hope of ultimate victory. 
The same heavenly vision gave this apostle an 
adequate faith. Everywhere the Lord the Spirit 
had gone before him, as the Eternal preacher of 
righteousness, and the notes of his voice Paul 
could hear in all languages and in all literatures. 
He who appeared to his servant had the Divine 
decree in his favor, and the stars in their courses 
were fighting for the advance of his kingdom. 
This, in a few words, is the revelation made to 
all Christian preachers by the first and greatest 
of their number. The Christian pulpit is the 
creation of Christ, and its power will last only 
so long as his spirit controls and inspires it. The 
concern of this chapter with Christ is as a sub¬ 
lime utility in the formation of human character, 
as the supreme instrument of the Spirit of God 
in the evolution of the religious life of men. If 
God is the centre of the universe, Christ is the 
centre of history, and no reform or permanent 
onward movement in society can be accomplished 
or expected without his intervention and support. 

John Stuart Mill has said that “it would not 
be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better 
translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract 


252 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


into the concrete than to endeavor so to live that 
Christ would approve our life.” 1 With the sup¬ 
port of this statement, it cannot be presumptuous 
to affirm that the one grand purpose of all gen¬ 
uine preaching must be to make men like Christ. 
For this end the special gifts, attainments, per¬ 
sonal character, position, and influence of the 
individual preacher are employed. But the 
preacher must have a message. It must be old, 
that is, it must be in keeping with the nature of 
the universe, indorsed by the courses of Provi¬ 
dence, sanctioned by the great voices of history, 
and in sympathy with the profoundest needs and 
the loftiest aspirations of mankind. It must also 
be new, that is, it is essential that it should be 
born into the preacher’s soul with overmastering 
vividness, and held there, in an atmosphere of 
homage and in the mood of obedience, as the 
veritable utterance of God. This message will 
include the higher elements in the ethnic religions, 
the permanent ideal forces of Hebraism, the 
spiritual wealth of Christian history, and, as the 
sum and superlative form of all ancient truth and 
the incomparable germ of all later discoveries, 
Christianity itself. The preacher’s message will 
almost inevitably connect itself in some way with 
the historic Christ. As a body of truth to be 
believed, and as leading to a theory of the uni¬ 
verse, it must compel men to think of him; and as 
1 Essays on Religion, p. 255. 


HISTOBY AND THE PREACHER. 253 


a system of ideas and influences for the education 
of humanity in justice, mercy, and faith, it must 
again connect itself with the Master. There are 
in preaching these three things, — the end, and 
the method, and the power. The end is that men 
may be brought to God; the power is the energy 
of ideas filled with the Spirit of God; and the 
method is the ascertained path of the transform¬ 
ing influence as that has come upon men in the 
past. The greatest test of the modern preacher 
occurs at this point. If history has nothing to 
say to him as to the mediation of God, he is miss¬ 
ing a fundamental truth; but if he is able to 
discover the method of the Divine Spirit in the 
past, he is clothing himself with power. The 
majesty of the end, that men may come to live in 
the consciousness of the Eternal Father, is apt, 
in our time, to obscure our sense of the impor¬ 
tance of the method; and, without the method 
that history has revealed and vindicated, the 
power can never come, at least in its fullness. 
Inasmuch as the main business of the Christian 
pulpit must ever be to bring the power of the 
Infinite to bear upon the finite, to enable men to 
behold all things in God, to interpret nature, 
social ties, and human history in terms of the 
Eternal Love, to inform the intellect, raise the 
affections, inspire the spirit, and shape the char¬ 
acter out of the boundless and creative goodness 
of God; and since God is with us, and we are 


254 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

the inheritors of a vast spiritual possession, — the 
temptation is to ignore the way in which this 
possession has come into our hands, to separate 
the idea and the history, the divine message and 
the course of events through which it lives, the 
revelation of God and the fields of time and cir¬ 
cumstance and personality in which it first blos¬ 
somed and came to maturity. If there is any 
pertinence in this discussion, it lies here. 4 The 
end and the method and the power cannot be 
separated. For the religious consciousness Christ 
is a permanent necessity; and for the pulpit that 
would purify and greaten that consciousness, he 
is the mightiest force known to man. 

The youngest among the present generation of 
ministers can recall the large place that Christ 
held in the preaching of other days. In Unita¬ 
rian and Trinitarian pulpits alike, there was 
heard the constant recurrence of his name, the 
frequent citation of his teaching, the inspiring 
use of his example, — above all, the promise of the 
mystic sense of God’s pity and love to those who 
would become his disciples. In the ministrations 
of the older pulpit, there was a use of the name 
of Christ full of rich significance; he had untold 
immediate value to the soul, and an infinite rep¬ 
resentative value; and as he was presented to the 
conscience and feeling of the time, floods of 
transforming influence broke through him upon 
the hearts of men. We can all recall the unde- 


THE OLDER PULPIT. 


255 


vout days in which we made this pulpit habit the 
subject of not entirely sympathetic study. Prob¬ 
ably we concluded that the’ name of Christ was 
not always understood by the men who used it, 
and sometimes, I fear, we were tempted to think 
that the language was excessive and overdone. 
Occasionally a burst of genuine eloquence would 
strike us in this mood like a celestial cyclone, 
level our prejudice with the ground, scatter our 
opposition, and make us feel in our inmost heart 
the reality of the mystic experience to which 
Christ bore such transcendent meaning. In the 
presence of this characteristic mood of the older 
pulpit of New England, the question has arisen 
whether this essentialness of Christ to the reli¬ 
gious consciousness, and to the powerful Christian 
pulpit, was apparent or real; whether it was a 
habit of the time, generated by a peculiar system 
of theology, or something grounded upon the 
nature of man, and consonant with the quickening 
movement of God in human history; whether it 
was in character artificial and temporary, or lan¬ 
guage bearing in it the image of imperishable 
truth, and therefore destined, amid whatever 
modifications, to persist in essential integrity. 
The question now is, whether this old-fashioned 
Christ-consciousness is worthy of enthronement 
in the pulpits of all communions; whether it is 
a version of truth that can never become obsolete, 
and a rendering of spiritual reality that should 


256 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

be reverently cherished, universally and thank¬ 
fully used. For myself, I believe that Paul’s 
message to the Corinthians — Jesus Christ and 
him crucified — is the highest that has ever come 
to man, and the personal form which the divine 
idea assumed in the apostolic announcement ap¬ 
pears to me essential to the reality and perma¬ 
nence of the idea itself. The mood of the older 
pulpit, the mood indeed of the powerful pulpits 
in all these centuries of Christian history, con¬ 
tains, I cannot but believe, in a solution of feel¬ 
ing, the truth that is to renovate the world. That 
truth is God in Christ reconciling this primarily 
animal and sensuous world unto himself, and lift¬ 
ing it by his own mediated might into the life 
and freedom of the Spirit. For all men Christ 
must become more and more the Supreme Medi¬ 
ator of God, and must not the pulpit that is to 
grow in power lay stronger emphasis upon the 
personality of the Mediator? 

I. 

As a preliminary in the discussion of the 
place of Christ in the pulpit of to-day, it must 
be remarked that preachers need to revive the 
sense of the supremacy of their calling by living 
more completely under the shadow of the Divine 
Preacher. Preaching has in a way become uni¬ 
versal. All the sciences, all the noble arts, and 
all serious schemes of thought point finally to life 


PREACHING UNIVERSAL. 


257 


as their grand ultimate. The ethical issues of 
all departments of knowledge are under universal 
consideration, and the application of ideas to life 
is the calling that includes the serious and posi¬ 
tive nature everywhere. This fact has bewildered 
the preacher of Christianity, and at times made 
him ready to confess that the pulpit had lost its 
power. It remains true, whatever reason may 
be assigned for it, that there exists a widespread 
undervaluation of the prophetic office in the 
Christian ministry. Societies, organizations, ex¬ 
ecutive power, business ability, are common sub¬ 
stitutes for the noble supremacy of the preacher’s 
soul through his sermon. Preachers need to 
return to their Divine Master along this line. 
He created no outward society, formed no insti¬ 
tution, relied for the permanence of his influence 
upon no administration. He was the chief of 
preachers, and moved upon the mind of his time 
through his imperishable words. Never man 
spake as he did, and one of the reasons for this 
unique power of speech was that he believed in 
the office of speech. He made his words unfor- 
getable; he coined them in terms of eternal truth 
and beauty and love; he adjusted them to the 
historic sense, the immediate sympathies, and 
the largest hopes of those whom he addressed; 
he fashioned them in the feeling of humanity, 
bathed them in the undefinable dreams of the 
soul, informed them with the sanctity of slum- 


258 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


bering sorrows and ideals, constituted them the 
heralds of a new day, the apostles of a divine 
world for mankind. The Lord was not an ex¬ 
tempore preacher, even if he did not use notes. 
Consideration is the mark of every utterance of 
his; and the wondrous message ran in forms of 
speech, that are matchless. His kingdom was 
not of this world. He had no system of govern¬ 
ment, no magistrates, no army and no police, no 
mighty external contrivance to give him ascend¬ 
ency over mankind. He relied upon the abso^ 
luteness of his thought, the divineness of his feel¬ 
ing, and the fitness and unforgetableness of his 
speech, to win for him his empire. And Caesar 
is gone, but Christ remains. Out of the golden 
tradition of the Lord’s preaching came the gos¬ 
pels, and from it as inspiration came the whole 
body of New Testament literature. The Word 
conceived in truth, born in love, and spoken in the 
fullness of insight and power, is the foundation of 
Christendom. The prophetic office of the minis¬ 
try, the calling of the preacher, is the corner¬ 
stone of our civilization; and if the present mem¬ 
bers of this calling shall live in the consciousness 
of Christ the preacher, there will be a universal 
revival of confidence in their vocation. 

When Phillips Brooks died, a New York paper 
remarked that, inasmuch as he was a preacher, 
his influence was necessarily a passing one, and 
the superficial generalization went with the force 


LONGEVITY IN BOOKS. 


259 


of an axiom. The idea was that this man, hav¬ 
ing done nothing in the way of pure literature, 
must soon be forgotten, and that when forgotten 
his influence must be regarded as at an end. 
Now, with all due respect to literary gentlemen, 
it may be questioned whether out of the half- 
dozen books that Phillips Brooks left behind 
him, as many of them will not be alive a cen¬ 
tury hence as in the case of a similar number 
produced by any book-maker of his generation. 
The books that have longevity, like the men, are 
those of robust, vital constitution. Form is 
indispensable to the noblest utterance, written or 
spoken, or done in color or stone, or musical 
sounds. But life is a vastly deeper assurance of 
permanence than form where the two must be 
contrasted; and if there is life enough in a word 
it will survive, although it be as enigmatical as 
the sayings of Heraclitus. If there is vitality in 
a book, it will last even if its form be as poor as 
that of the works of Aristotle. The gift of 
rhyme is no passport to immortality: there are 
as many forgotten poets in the English language 
as there are authors of sermons. Insight, love, 
pure power, serviceableness to humanity, — these 
are the forces by which books survive. The 
incompatibility with literature of the highest pos¬ 
sible form of pulpit production is refuted by the 
Parables of Jesus. The compass of the thought 
is beyond definition, the movement of feeling is 


260 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

like a heaving sea of divine passion, and the form 
is that of the consummate artist. The question 
of art is not primarily one of imagination. It is 
an issue raised first of all by life. The perfect 
art has its complete illustration and vindication 
only in the Incarnation . 1 The Divine idea per¬ 
fectly uttered in the Divine Life sets the stand¬ 
ard for all beauty. When the Word became 
flesh, the life of man became master, and the 
imagination of genius sank to its place of due 
subordination as servant. The consummate liter¬ 
ary art of Jesus begins from his perfect embodi¬ 
ment of his Father’s will. Out of the supremacy 
of his humanity comes his inapproachable mastery 
over the forms of beauty. “True or not,” as 
Romanes well says, the 44 entire story of the cross, 
from its commencement in prophetic aspiration 
to its culmination in the gospel, is by far the 
most magnificent presentation in literature. And 
surely the fact of its having all been lived does 
not detract from its poetic value. Nor does the 
fact of its being capable of appropriation by 
the individual Christian of to-day as still a vital 
religion detract from its sublimity. Only to a 
man wholly destitute of spiritual perception can 
it be that Christianity should fail to appear the 
greatest exhibition of the beautiful, the sublime, 
and of all else that appeals to our spiritual 
nature which has ever been known upon the 
1 See Westcott’s Essay, The Relation of Christianity to Art. 


PAUL'S LETTERS. 


261 


earth .” 1 The harmony of great qualities in 
Christ is final. The study of the gospels as 
literature has resulted in a keener appreciation 
both of the thought and the art in the teaching 
of Jesus. He is the standard for morality and 
for art, the consummate expression of both. The 
immortality of his teaching is sure, because the 
thought is final and the form surpassing, because 
the life eternal is there in a body that cannot 
even grow old. And when one comes to works 
that are far beneath this absolute standard, the 
promise of permanence is great and sure in 
proportion to their vitality. The form of Paul’s 
letters is far from artistic. Eloquent and won¬ 
derful as they are in passages, the literary ex¬ 
pression cannot as a whole be ranked high. Set¬ 
ting aside single chapters that for majesty and 
beauty are unsurpassed in the literature of the 
world, his writings as a body are exceedingly 
informal. He had no sense of their worth, no re¬ 
motest suspicion that they would be more highly 
prized two thousand years after his death than 
in his own day. They were the answers of a 
wise and teeming mind to the needs of the hour, 
and the thought of book-making never entered 
their author’s brain. And yet, with the excep¬ 
tion of the Parables of Jesus, there are no writ¬ 
ings in the world so much alive and so pro¬ 
foundly influential as the correspondence of Paul 
1 Thoughts on Religion, p. 160. 


262 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY . 

with the Christian churches of his time. What¬ 
ever has life in it will last, and the sermons of 
Phillips Brooks have as much of that high power 
in them as any of the prose productions of the 
generation to which he belonged. 

But the assumption, that when a man is for¬ 
gotten his influence is necessarily over, is wholly 
unfounded. Keeping to Bishop Brooks as a 
convenient and magnificent symbol, it must be 
said that his publications are the smallest part 
of him. There are thousands of living men and 
women whose characters he touched with trans¬ 
forming power, and who are the transmitters of 
the great vital impulse received from him. While 
the generation lasts to which he spoke, his in¬ 
fluence in the world will be conscious and con¬ 
trolling. There is always danger that the good 
book may be prized above the good man, which 
is fatal folly. But it is said that men die and 
books live on. To this it must be replied that 
the average term of man’s existence is greatly in 
excess of that of even powerful books. One half 
of the human race, it is computed, die in in¬ 
fancy, and it is believed that a similar compu¬ 
tation would show that infant mortality among 
literary productions is greater far. If it be true 
that those whom the gods love die young, nine 
tenths of the books published must be very highly 
regarded in heaven. More human beings than 
books can be found, out of every generation, who 


THE MOTHER AS TEACHER. 


263 


have attained the age of one hundred years. Set¬ 
ting aside the few books that cannot die, to the 
number of which a remarkable century adds one 
or two perhaps, a human being is a vastly better 
investment than a novel, or a treatise scientific, 
philosophical, or theological. The hope of the 
true book-maker is that his publication may meet 
a sympathetic mind, fertilize it, command its 
spiritual power, and thus prolong its life after 
death. The office of the mother is infinitely 
greater than that of the successful novelist. The 
mothers rule the world from their graves. In 
the influence of Edwards and Bushnell and Emer¬ 
son and Carlyle, that of their first and greatest 
teachers still lives. What the last of these writ¬ 
ers has said of his mother has its echo in the 
heart of our whole nobler humanity. “O pious 
mother! kind, good, brave, and truthful soul as 
I have ever found, and more than I have ever 
elsewhere found in this world, your poor Tom, 
long out of his school-days now, has fallen very 
lonely, very lame and broken, in this pilgrimage 
of his; and you cannot help him or cheer him 
by a kind word any more. From your grave in 
Ecclefechan Kirkyard yonder you bid him trust 
in God, and that also he will try if he can under¬ 
stand and Jo .” 1 There was a time when noble 
women forgot their sorrow for joy that a man 
was born into the world; now it is the issue of 
1 Life of Carlyle, vol. iv. p. 127. 


264 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

a novel that scatters the deep anxieties. Old 
Socrates was right in thinking more of the sym¬ 
pathetic and large-minded pupil than of the liter¬ 
ary production. The works of Plato are rich 
and priceless, but Plato himelf is largely the 
work of Socrates. And the greatest achieve¬ 
ment of the master of the Academy was that he 
moulded the thought and evolved the intellectual 
power of Aristotle. If fate should submit for 
the choice of the gifted and powerful a good 
book or a great character to bear abroad and 
continue his influence in the world, he would be 
a fool who should choose the book in preference 
to the character. Even if their tombstones, un¬ 
like that of Fichte’s, make no mention of it, the 
prophecy is forever true that “the teachers shall 
shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they 
that turn many to righteousness as the stars for 
ever and ever .” 1 

This is the great principle underlying the 
strange conceit of apostolical succession. The 
conceit is, that episcopal ordination runs back to 
the ordination which the apostles received from 
Christ, and that to the hands of bishops the grace 
that truly consecrates a man to the work of the 
Christian ministry is confined. The great princi¬ 
ple is, that life comes only from life, and that the 
moral and spiritual power of the present generation 
is largely derived from the holy succession that 
1 Dan. xii. 3. 


APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 


265 


goes back to the creative soul of Christ for its en¬ 
dowment. The unseen is still over the Christian 
world, and its doors are not shut against its prayers 
and faith. The windows of heaven are ever open, 
and the flood of life is always descending into hospi¬ 
table souls. But all the good that believers enjoy 
does not come in that direct way. History means 
more than even the profoundest thinker can 
know; the ordering of human beings in a grand 
succession in time counts for much in the educa¬ 
tion and achievements of mankind. Jesus gath¬ 
ered about him the finest youth of his time. He 
moulded their thought, controlled their passion, 
dominated their will, and gave them the life of 
God. They went forth with the vital supply 
which grew greater the more it was drawn upon, 
and established their supremacy over thousands. 
Again the receivers became givers, the conquered 
conquerors, and the tide of Divine life rolled 
over new spaces of our common humanity. And 
so it has rolled on down to our own generation. 
It is the stream that makes glad the city of God. 
It has its head-waters in Christ, and its sacred 
and ever-broadening channel is the multitude 
that no man can number that in each generation 
have believed that the surest way to perpetuate 
personal power in the earth is to charge a suc¬ 
cessor with the life of the Lord. 

In order to develop the full power of the 
preacher there must be cherished a supreme in- 


266 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

difference to the remembrance of mankind. One 
must rise into the mood that beholds the great 
moral task of humanity, and that sees that every 
true word and every pure and brave life, whether 
remembered or forgotten, is a permanent contri¬ 
bution to the final victorious accomplishment of 
that task. The supreme question is not whether 
one is known as having part in the great enterprise, 
but whether one has in very truth a living influ¬ 
ence in it. It is a sacred inducement to this 
high mood to recall the familiar fact that our 
civilization is largely the product of the forgot¬ 
ten. The farms of England are a delight to the 
eye, they are laid out with so much symmetry; 
the fences of hedge and stone are so fine; the 
face of the earth wears a cultured look, and 
exactness and neatness reign everywhere. To 
whom are Englishmen to-day indebted for bring¬ 
ing the primeval forest into this condition ? To 
more than fifty generations of forgotten toilers. 
It is largely the magnificent gift to the present 
of dead and unremembered men. The face of 
their country they changed; they made it rich 
with fruitfulness and bright with enduring beauty. 
Their names have perished, but their work re¬ 
mains. The same holds true of the methods of 
business. The epochs in the changes of business, 
like those consequent upon the use of steam and 
electricity, are remembered; but the multitudes 
of minor important changes are associated with 


OUR DEBT TO THE PAST . 


267 


no names. The business youth of to-day is the 
inheritor of a system of untold value, perfected 
by hosts of sagacious men working in concert, 
who have passed forever into oblivion. The 
I ocean steamer of to-day is an evolution through 
gradual improvements from the canoe of the 
savage. The history gathered up in one of these 
masterpieces of naval architecture is singularly 
impressive. Every rib of steel, every bolt and 
spar, every rope in the rigging, every foot of 
construction from stem to stern, from keel to 
deck, and from deck to the pennant flying from 
the main royal mast, embodies the successive and 
accumulated inventions of uncounted generations 
of forgotten men of genius. The anonymous even 
in good literature is striking. No form of con¬ 
temporary writing is more powerful than the 
press. The newspaper wields, from the depth to 
the height of society, an unmeasured influence. 
These issues descend upon the community every 
morning and evening thick as snowflakes. They 
change the complexion of public opinion, and for 
the most part the change is an improvement. 
Untold good is done, and untold evil is averted, 
by the daily newspaper. The learning, ability, 
and industry represented by it are immense, and 
they are anonymous. Many of our finest ballads 
are of unknown authorship, many of our noblest 
hymns have broken loose from all personal moor¬ 
ings, and are adrift in the rich and nameless ser- 


268 CHBIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


vice of mankind. It is impossible to break up the 
fragrance in the summer air and parcel it out as 
the contribution of separate flowers. So with 
many of our songs and hymns. They are the 
sweet exhalations of unknown souls. It is at first 
almost bewildering to think that this anonymous¬ 
ness reaches to some of the masterpieces of litera¬ 
ture. The authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey is 
past finding out. That wonder of literature, the 
Book of Job, is a nameless book. The man who 
first faced the whole problem of human suffering, 
who gathered into his words the sighs of countless 
centuries, who poured forth in mournful and ma¬ 
jestic utterance his sense of the mystery of life, 
who drew a character that for sublime resignation 
and immortal love of the Divine, cannot be 
matched in the whole range of human composi¬ 
tions, — the spiritual genius who enriched the 
world with this unsurpassed work of truth and art 
and life has left no trace of himself in the memory 
of mankind. What is called the higher criticism 
is largely an increased sense of the treasure men 
have in the Old Testament, combined with a fresh 
realization of the fact that they know not whom to 
thank for the great inheritance. Who wrote the 
inimitable biographies in the Book of Genesis? 
Who produced the magnificent historical epic of 
the Exodus? Who first told the story of Kuth? 
Who composed the greatest ode in all literature, 
the ninetieth psalm ? Out of what soul of love came 


THE ANONYMOUS IN LIFE. 


269 


the hymns of Israel, written as they are “ in star- 
fire and immortal tears ” ? Who was it who laid 
bare his whole heart in Ecclesiastes ? To whom 
are we indebted for the vision of the conqueror 
from Edom and the suffering servant of Jehovah? 
Of much that is most precious in literature, of 
much that is mightiest in the Bible, one must say, 
what Origen said of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
“no one knows the authorship of it but God.” 
Civilization is largely the product of the unre¬ 
membered. Taking that of Great Britain as a 
convenient illustration, one finds it almost im¬ 
possible to imagine the labor represented in it. 
English history is but a hint at the infinite unre¬ 
corded. One thinks of the missionaries that were 
sent out into the heathenism of the land, the 
hosts of successors in other generations, the 
schools and universities that grew out of the pas¬ 
sion for the spread of Christian truth, the books 
brought into existence to guide the thought and 
fire the spirit of common men, the language born 
of love and inspired with renewing grace. One 
thinks of the toil represented in the physical 
fibre, the mental habit, and the moral character 
of the people in the whole complex and stupen¬ 
dous achievement of British civilization; and one 
beholds through it a host of forgotten teachers, 
preachers, authors, workers, and sufferers all, in 
multitude like the stars. Once for all, fame is 
excluded. The preacher shares the common lot. 


270 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


His calling is under no special ban. God buries 
his workmen in oblivion, but carries on his work. 
The longing of a form of service which shall 
insure an earthly immortality, or an approach to 
it, is futile. That is the fortune of but few; and 
one who deserves it is as likely to find it in the 
ministry as anywhere else. The preacher Luther 
is as sure of remembrance as the poet Dante. 
The question does not turn upon the nature of 
the calling, but upon the size of the man. And 
it may be put down as certain that only a hand¬ 
ful of men out of any age are big enough to be 
discernible at the distance of a thousand years. 
The eternal incentive comes from love. The 
universe is not anonymous; God’s work always 
bears his signature. The preacher is in a divine 
world, and the vision of it, and the hope that 
he may aid in making that world the abode of 
the whole human race, is a motive with infinite 
reserves of power. 

The office of the preacher opens a door to influ¬ 
ence as wide as that offered by any other calling 
on the earth. It has room for the best exercise 
of the largest gifts, and permits the richest forms 
of intellectual and spiritual attainment. It leaves 
little time for antiquarian taste, for the pursuit 
of studies that are ornamental rather than useful. 
There are ten thousand things that need to be 
done in the intellectual world that the preacher 
cannot do. But the same thing must be said of 


GREATNESS OF THE MINISTRY. 271 

the poet, the scientist, the philosopher, the lin¬ 
guist, and every other citizen in the republic 
of thought. Division of labor and a rigid form 
of specialism is the common universal necessity. 
Still, measuring calling against calling, there is 
none for which ideas have an interest so deep, 
and a worth so immediate and indispensable, as 
the office of the preacher. To the thoroughly 
equipped preacher of to-day science has a won¬ 
derful message. He absorbs the principle, the 
ideal strength, of her message, passing over the 
detail that belongs to the specialist. The great 
ideas that lie in the philosophic systems of the 
world have more vitality and utility for the 
preacher than for the thinker who is aiming at 
the production of a scheme that shall render ob¬ 
solete the whole mass of preceding speculation. 
These systems of thought are mines which only 
the man in sympathetic ethical contact with man¬ 
kind can operate to advantage. The learning of 
the historian of philosophy he cannot possess, but 
the great thoughts of the past he may master 
and make his own as few can. The same may 
be said of literature. The niceties of the study 
and the erudition of the literary commentator 
he may not have, but the spiritual possession of 
the vision and the passion of the world’s great 
artists he may assuredly have. No form of human 
service is better fitted than the Christian min¬ 
istry to reveal the vitality that is the source of 


272 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


all great literature. To the preacher, literature 
must ever be sacred as one of the forms of beauty 
into which the race has put its deepest, most reli¬ 
gious life. For him, more than for most men, 
its secret must be an open secret. 

“ Yet, with hands of evil stained 
And an ear by discord pained, 

He is groping for the keys 
Of the heavenly harmonies.” 

Even Lowell has left nothing profounder or more 
adequate on this perennial theme than Phillips 
Brooks’s essay entitled “Literature and Life .” 1 
It is a classic vindication of literature, readier to 
yield her deepest thoughts and purposes to the 
preacher than to most men. As for history, it 
has a human interest, a symbolic significance, an 
imaginative value, for the minister of Christ such 
as it can have for no other man. Time is too 
limited, duties are too numerous and urgent, to 
allow the man in charge of a parish to be a master 
of detail anywhere; but, according to his native 
intellectual gift, he may live with the ideal forces 
of the world in a measure and manner preemi¬ 
nent. Preaching may keep him in the kingdom 
of truth and love, sensible of its transcendence, 
lifted by the vision of its wealth and limitless 
reach; and his sermons may be strong and beau¬ 
tiful embodiments of the thoughts which to him 
are the ultimate Realities of the world. The pro- 

1 Essays and Addresses. 


THE SUFFICIENT MOTIVE. 


273 


phetic office of Christ meant the measureless and 
infallible vision of the truth, the homage, and the 
hope of the heart, the strength and freedom of 
the character, the full communion with the Divine 
world and the human. For Jesus, the calling of 
the preacher was largest opportunity, the endless 
expansion of thought and life and influence. 
And for those who are baptized into the faith of 
the Master, the ministry will be the name for the 
same august opportunity. The call to preach 
the gospel will be the invitation to the largest 
and richest intellectual life, to a career in con¬ 
stant communion with the ideal forces of the 
world and the needs of the human heart, to citi¬ 
zenship in the republic of truth and beauty and 
love, and to the production of such sermons as 
shall be the preacher’s homage to the divine and 
his loving tribute to the souls of his fellow-men. 
The thought of the permanence of these produc¬ 
tions will not trouble him. The only permanent 
forces are God’s thoughts, and God’s growing, 
apprehending children; and sermons will be pro¬ 
duced with the same affluent indifference as the 
earth produces flowers. Both the flowers and the 
sermons are perishable, but the life out of which 
they come and that to which they minister is 
eternal; and the preacher’s homage is to the 
creative Life, and the ever-growing human need. 
Whether Paul wrote the pastoral epistles or not, 
that is a genuine Pauline expression: “ I thank 


274 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

him that enabled me, even Christ Jesus our Lord, 
for that he counted me faithful, putting me into 
his service .” 1 He rightly saw that to this calling 
he owed his insight, his opportunity, his know¬ 
ledge of the world, his sympathy with mankind, 
his expanded intellect, his greatened character 
and ever-widening influence in bringing in the 
kingdom of God. It was the multitude of cow¬ 
ards that made Gideon’s army so worthless at 
the first. After it was reduced to the immortal 
three hundred it became invincible. It is the 
unbelievers in the prophetic office who are in the 
ministry, those who are drunk with other inter¬ 
ests and incapable in this, who demoralize the 
pulpits of the land. The churches are waiting 
for a new generation of preachers who shall study 
their calling in the light of Christ’s career, and 
come forth with boundless confidence in it as 
furnishing room for the exercise of the greatest 
gifts, and an opportunity for the most extended 
and enduring influence. As Dr. Martineau said 
nearly fifty years ago: “He who finds room, 
under the conditions of the sermon, to interest 
and engage his whole soul, would be guilty of 
affectation were he to disown the occasion which 
wakes up his worthiest spirit, and which, however 
narrow when measured by the capacities of other 
men, is adequate to receive his best thought and 
aspirations .” 2 Although the author of these 

1 1 Tim. i. 12. 

2 Endeavors after the Christian Life, preface to second series. 


CANDIDATES FOR MORALITY. 


275 


words long since graduated from the regular 
ministry, he has carried into his profoundest 
work the prophetic gift, and the high distinction 
of his thinking is that everywhere the ethical 
interest is kept clearly and reverently in view 
as final and absolute. 


II. 

Another preliminary that must not be wholly 
omitted is that the presentation of Jesus as the 
embodiment of the pity of God must continue 
to be one of the great themes of the preacher. 
Some one has said that men are candidates for 
rationality rather than strictly rational, and the 
remark may be extended to other aspects of hu¬ 
man life. The multitudes are candidates for 
morality rather than the possessors of moral 
character. They are largely children of impulse, 
with a moral ideal and hope rather than a moral 
experience. The calling of the Christian is saint¬ 
hood, but the actual life struggles forward at a, 
tremendous distance behind this flying-goal. In 
a well-ordered, homogeneous, highly educated 
community one does not realize readily the full 
meaning of Jesus as the embodied pity of the 
Infinite. The average of character is so high, 
the measure of success is so great, the conscious¬ 
ness of worth and moral strength is so real and 
inspiring, that one is apt to forget the condition 
of the outstanding world. When an honored 


276 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

man is laid to rest, one thinks of the noble use 
to which talent and opportunity have been turned, 
and of the “Well done!” that must be his wel¬ 
come in the unseen. If one is living in circles 
that are Christian by inheritance, whose men and 
women have a strength that represents the con¬ 
quests of many generations of aggressive charac¬ 
ter, there is one supreme aspect of the gospel 
that is likely to count for nothing. Jesus could 
not at first mean the same thing to Paul as to 
the penitent thief. The apostle could get at that 
aspect of the gospel only as he transcended his 
own inheritance, education, imperious will, and 
preeminently successful career. At the present 
time the Salvation Army has revived this part of 
the Christian message. (The gospel is not con¬ 
cerned only with successful lives: it extends to 
the vaster number of the unsuccessful. The 
larger part of mankind fall at length and justly 
into the mood of the penitent thief. Life has 
been one long and miserable mistake. Foolish 
interests have been cultivated at the expense of 
wiser ones; selfish courses have been chosen, and 
those that were noble rejected; courage and devo¬ 
tion have been diverted from their legitimate 
objects, and wasted upon the vain and impossi¬ 
ble; the beauty and the chivalry of existence 
have been sacrificed, not to the Eternal Holiness, 
but to Moloch; the early, infinitely beautiful, and 
prophetic blossom of manhood and womanhood 


THE UNSUCCESSFUL. 


277 


was blasted and no fruit has followed; the homes 
founded upon the instincts, and for a while pene¬ 
trated by great affections, exhausted their moral 
and emotional outfit and became dwellings in the 
dust; business careers that promised well have 
sunk to an unequal struggle to keep the wolf 
from the door; and old age, that in the distance 
seemed a reservation for the quieting of the heart, 
is visited by unexpected anxieties and sorrows. 
This is the outline of a history not very far from 
universal. Men are overborne; the odds against 
them prove too many; they labor on, but under 
the sense of failure. Now for this consciousness 
of failure nothing can take the place of the pity 
of God in Christ. To speak of the pity of God, 
without Christ, will not do in this instance. The 
compassionating man may lead to belief in the 
compassionating God; at all events, there is no 
other path to faith for the countless multitudes 
of the defeated. Confidence in the everlasting 
worth for God of those who have been unsuccess¬ 
ful here can be created nowhere except in the 
atmosphere of Christ’s ministry. The weary and 
the heavy-laden want rest in the Divine sympa¬ 
thies of Jesus, and his name will renew courage 
under the most crushing defeat, and rekindle hope 
on the very boundaries of the outer darknessP 
The forgiveness of sins is only the beginning 
of the higher life, but it is the beginning. The 
message of the preacher sounds in the ears of 


2T8 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

thousands who have long since abandoned all 
thought of the perfect life, who have surrendered 
their ideals as foolish fictions, and who live in 
the far country in moral famine and inward 
disgrace. The moralism of Christianity has ab¬ 
solutely no meaning for these multitudes, any 
more than the sky has for a caged eagle. The 
sight of it awakens mysterious reminiscences and 
momentary hopes, but the fixed mood is one of 
indifference. That magnificence is for the for¬ 
tunate and not the unfortunate, for the free and 
not the imprisoned. The suffering and hardened 
and indifferent world waits for a broken heart in 
the presence of the Eternal pity in Christ. The/ 
primary want is the dissolving of the soul in a 
sea of regret and grief over the beauty of the 
Lord made real in the Master. The moral ideal 
will never rise upon these multitudes until it rises 
out of this sea of penitential feeling, like the 
sun out of a troubled ocean. Nothing but the 
fires of such sorrow and love can melt the chains 
of evil habit, consume the force of earthly incli¬ 
nation, and burn up utterly the vast psychic accu¬ 
mulation of a soul alienated from the true order 
and divine law of its life. Passion led astray, 
and passion must recover to righteousness. Only 
the fury of love can avail for those within the 
prison of moral despair. The Pentecostal move¬ 
ment was of this character. The apostolic church 
began in immortal regret and love. The masses 


DIVINE COMPASSION. 


279 


had long abandoned all faith in the higher life; 
ethical standards had been adjusted to human 
infirmities, and obligations had been met with 
imbecilities. There must be a movement of 
thought resulting in a permanent and mighty 
passion of sorrow and hope; otherwise the apos¬ 
tolic church cannot begin. This was the feat 
accomplished by Peter’s sermon, and its power 
depended upon its assurance of forgiveness and 
Divine pity in the Lord. 

It seems humiliating to set a grown man who 
cannot read his own language to the task of learn¬ 
ing the alphabet. But there is no other way to 
the desired attainment. Preachers are often both 
fastidious and impatient; they scorn the view of 
human nature which considers it primarily in 
need of the Divine compassion, and they hate to 
linger so long upon what seems the mere intro¬ 
duction to the Christian life. But there is the 
world in its confirmed consciousness of moral 
defeat. Nothing but the tenderness and benig¬ 
nity that awoke the poor thief on the cross from 
his lifelong delusion, that rolled away the thick 
cloud of his doubt, that fixed his sane mind upon 
the immutable reality of the Divine world, and 
that drew from his inmost heart the great and 
confident request, “Jesus, remember me when 
thou comest in thy kingdom,” can avail for the 
general need of mankind to-day. The pulpit 
that disowns this message is not the pulpit for 


280 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

humanity. It is the organ of a class, a sect, an 
aristocracy; it is not the voice of God for the 
million. And what is wanted to-day more than 
anything, else is a Christianity for the nation. 
Elect individuals and households may go on to 
perfection; the people need repentance and faith. 
National penitence must precede faith in the pos¬ 
sibility of national righteousness. Unprecedented 
material success has laid the life of the people 
under the consciousness of moral failure. Mul¬ 
titudes believe that morality constitutes no essen¬ 
tial part of human life, simply because they have 
lost sight of it in the world, and can see no room 
for it in the struggle for business existence. 
When the moral consciousness has, for any rea¬ 
son, gone to wreck, its recovery is the first task 
of the preacher. And the elemental powers of 
the moral world, the forces creative of insight 
and love and hope, are the sympathies of the Lord 
Jesus. His place must be supreme in the pulpit 
of to-day, because only his divine humanity can 
recover from wreck the moral consciousness of 
the people; only his effulgent compassions can 
reveal the Eternal beauty and reanimate the 
lives that have long been dead; only his gracious 
pity can win again to hope and to fresh and 
undiscourageable effort the multitudes that seem 
to themselves elected to everlasting despair. The 
author of the fifty-first Psalm, whoever he was 
and whatever may have been the form of his sin, 


NATIONAL REPENTANCE. 


281 


voices by anticipation the need of mankind: 
“Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow .” 1 
A moral bath is the world’s first necessity; a 
soaking in the sea of penitential feeling; the 
cleansing and renewal of life that can come only 
out of the depths of regret and hope, and the 
conscience and heart dissolved in high emotion 
and transformed into a sublime passion. The 
message of the Absolute pity in Jesus Christ is 
the supreme instrument to this end. “For as, 
when the likeness painted on a panel has been 
effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness 
it is must needs come once more to enable the 
portrait to be renewed on the same wood; for, for 
the sake of his picture, even the mere wood on 
which it is painted is not thrown away, but the 
outline is renewed upon it: in the same way, also, 
the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image 
of the Father, came to our region to renew man 
once made in his likeness, and find him as one 
lost, by the remission of sins .” 2 And the su¬ 
preme difficulty of the times is not faced until 
the preacher confronts the need of national re¬ 
pentance, and the origin of moral life for the 
body of the people. Class-preaching is fatal if 
accepted without protest and as a finality. The 
message of Jesus is for the nation, and the 
preacher must not fear to match the gospel 

1 Psalm li. 7. 

2 Athanasius, The Incarnation, ch. xix. 1, 2. 


282 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


against the most inveterate mood of the time, — 
national indifference to the ideal. And here, 
again, Athanasius has a timely word for the 
Christian minister: “Just as a noble wrestler, 
great in skill and courage, does not pick out his 
antagonists for himself, lest he should raise a 
suspicion of his being afraid of some of them, 
but puts it in the choice of the onlookers, and 
especially so if they happen to be his enemies, so 
that, against whomsoever they match him, him he 
may throw, and be believed superior to them all; 
so, also, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, 
even Christ, did not devise a death for his own 
body, so as not to appear to be fearing some 
other death, but he accepted on the cross, and 
endured, a death inflicted by others, and above 
all by his enemies, which they thought dreadful 
and ignominious and not to be faced, so that, this 
also being destroyed, both he himself might be 
believed to be the Life, and the power of death 
be brought utterly to nought .” 1 Christianity 
was at the first, and in the highest sense, a popu¬ 
lar religion; and if it is to continue to be the 
religion of the nation and mankind, its preachers 
must return to the elemental power of the pity of 
God in Jesus Christ. 

1 The Incarnation, xxiv. 1, 2, 3. 


REVELATION AND HISTORY. 


283 


III. 

Passing now from preliminaries to the discus¬ 
sion proper, it is to be noted that there is one 
marked tendency of the time that favors this 
devout return to Christ on the part of the 
preacher. History is counting for more every 
day among our representative scholars. The 
ideal world is great; so, also, is the field of its 
manifestation, — space and time. Events, facts, 
circumstances, persons, national movements, are 
the forms through which the Divine world affirms 
its reality. And the two belong together, at 
least as far as man is concerned. The idea can¬ 
not be understood except in the light of its his¬ 
tory, and the disregard of the forms of time and 
circumstance, place and personality, in the treat¬ 
ment of the idea, is a sin against it, no less than 
disrespect to the need of humanity. Whether 
Hegel is justly responsible for the habit of mind 
that treats history as the mere husk of thought, 
it would not be safe to say; but certainly the 
schools that have drawn their inspiration from 
him have done despite to the rich course of 
events. This is notably the attitude of the Eng¬ 
lish Transcendental school, of whose principles 
the works of the late Thomas Hill Green are the 
most powerful presentation. This school has 
done herculean service for the supremacy of a 
spiritual interpretation of the universe and man’s 


284 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

life; it Las dealt a philosophic death-blow to sen¬ 
sationalism, with its whole brood of metaphysical 
imbecilities, in its consummate Humian form, and 
in many ways and in magnificent measure rescued 
British speculation from implicit atheism, and 
enriched it with the greater thoughts of other 
nations. Still it is by no means free from trans¬ 
gression of the law of God, and one of its sins 
is its undervaluation of history. In his noble 
little book, “The Witness of God,” Professor 
Green defines God as an act of eternal sacrifice, 
and Christ as the reproduction of that act in 
time. This Christ he does not identify with 
Jesus of Nazareth; the ideal is suggested, won- 
drously suggested, by his history, but is not to 
be confounded with it. The essence of the Chris¬ 
tian faith is an act of death to sin, and of life to 
holiness. The historical is but incidental, and 
has nothing to do with the eternal force of the 
truth. Death, resurrection, and ascension are 
forms for the Christ ideal, and the evangelical 
tradition empties its total meaning into a supreme 
ethical conception . 1 This habit of mind cannot 

1 Witness of God. Idealism at the expense of history, — that 
is the sin of this and numberless other productions from the 
same school. One wants to recall these thinkers to the witness 
of God in fact. The undervaluation of the temporal may amount 
to blasphemy against the Eternal. At all events, temporal and 
eternal are here in a sacramental union, and the separation of 
either from the other is despite done to the genius of philosophy, 
no less than the spirit of religion. 


FAITH AND FACT. 


285 


prevail; the course of events and the richness 
and robustness of fact are too mighty for it. 
Long ago the reaction set in, and history is 
regarded as inseparable from its embodied idea. 
In the interest of faith, scholars have explored 
the history of faith; in homage to ideas, thinkers 
have traced the growth of ideas. And just as 
we associate the stars with night, — with night in 
the deepening twilight, in the progress up to her 
sable meridian, and in the gradual lifting of 
her vast shadow, — so we are coming to asso¬ 
ciate permanently, inevitably, ideas and their 
great historic setting, particular truths and their 
epochal manifestation, the energies of the world 
of thought and the arena of their victorious ex¬ 
pression. The historic spirit is ever the best ally 
of the intellectual spirit; and while history makes 
possible a larger abstraction of ideas, and enables 
the scholar who is at the same time a thinker to 
dispense with its forms and devote himself to 
the building of the temple of pure and absolute 
truth, still for the purposes of education in the 
individual mind and among men at large, and in 
the interest of power, the permanent association 
of ideas and their great historic expression is a 
habit of thought that all wise men will vie with 
one another to perpetuate. Thus it comes to 
pass that the most searching scholarship of the 
age, that which finds in the records of the New 
Testament the largest accidental and temporary 


286 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

element, nevertheless shows a relation between 
Christ and Christianity more organic, indissolu¬ 
ble, and absolute. 

This intellectual habit of our century must be 
regarded as of the utmost importance to the 
preacher. He must not, even if he has a well- 
defined system of thought, become its open and 
constant advocate; least of all must he stand 
forth as the champion of a finished interpretation 
of the life of man. The work is not completed; 
the table of contents is before us, and the plan 
of the great vital discussion is already fairly well 
indicated; but several important chapters yet 
remain to be written, and beyond what is written it 
is not edifying to go. The preacher must be able 
to read ideas through history; to see how far they 
receive adequate expression in a given section of 
history; to keep them warm and human and 
mighty through perpetual alliance with the intel¬ 
lectual passion, the moral struggle, and the noble 
sorrow and hope of mankind. There is not in 
all this foolish world anything so utterly vain as 
abstract preaching, the presentation of ideas to¬ 
tally disengaged from the times and persons in 
which they first appeared, the discussion of moral 
truth out of all relation to the souls that brought 
it into our world. It will be seen later that 
there is a fatal philosophic objection to the ab¬ 
stract treatment of truth when regarded as other 
than a temporary method of thought, and that 


GREAT MEN AND PROGRESS. 


287 


the heart of humanity is right when it demands 
a perpetual association between substance and 
form, history and truth, Christ and Christianity . 1 


IV. 

The notion that accounts for human progress 
as due to the agency of great men lends its 
weighty sanction to the assertion that Christ 
should stand at the centre of all preaching. For 
the believer in freedom, for the man who cannot 
accept the wild materialistic generalization that 
all the life on this planet is in the last analysis 
the result of the fashioning sweep of cosmic 
forces, human progress can be accounted for only 
as it is seen to issue from the ascendency of great 
men. Great men are the mediators of the intel¬ 
lectual and moral power of God, and are there¬ 
fore the proximate cause of the evolution of man¬ 
kind. Men of exalted genius are more than the 

1 It is remarkable that Dr. Bushnell, whose studies kept him 
wholly ignorant of Kant, is nevertheless dealing with Kant’s 
problem in his rather diffuse Dissertation on Language, and in 
his far clearer, compacter, and finer production, The Gospel a 
Gift to the Imagination. He saw, and it is a remarkable wit¬ 
ness to his genius, that thought is inseparable from sense-forms, 
and so-called abstract thinking is but thought with the sensuous 
accompaniment attenuated to the last degree. The dialectic of 
Plato is a wonderful exhibition of the power of his spirit to elim¬ 
inate all but the slightest shadow, the palest image of sense, from 
the work of the reason; but when he tries to emancipate him¬ 
self wholly from the forms of this world, he goes off into no¬ 
where ; and abstract preaching follows his example, without at 
all sharing in the magnificence of his movement. 


288 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

product of their time: they make a special draft 
upon eternity on their way hither, and they be¬ 
come upon the maturing of their powers the 
makers of their time. Originality is the highest 
realization of freedom; for it implies the truest 
insight into the order of the world, material and 
moral, and the ability to keep in loyal accord 
with that. What is perfect freedom if it be not 
the gift of perfect discernment and the power of 
a Complete obedience? Originality is, then, the 
maker of this human world of ours; and the new 
and valid insights work through the new and 
mighty personality. The advent of a truly great 
man is, as it were, a fresh and wiser hand upon 
the helm of human history. In accordance with 
his closer observation and sounder judgment, he 
changes the course of human progress. The 
working forces are with us, immanent in our race; 
but the great man comes, puts his hand to the 
wheel, and steers the vast self-moving craft in 
new and happier directions. Dim and nebulous 
as the personality of Moses has become, the most 
destructive criticism is still confident that in the 
splendor of his genius and the force of his char¬ 
acter Hebrew nationalism had its origin. It is 
easy to see how the history of the people of Israel 
is the history of their great men. Moses, David, 
Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the unknown pro¬ 
phet of the exile mark the successive appearance 
of new ideal forces working through extraordi¬ 
nary personalities. 


EVOLUTION IN HISTORY. 


289 


Wherever we turn, the same view of human 
progress is supported. Luther gave a new direc¬ 
tion to the subsequent development of European 
life; he was the master of his age, and turned its 
best forces to fresh and momentous expression. 
To write the history of the Reformation and 
leave Luther out of the account is not possible. 
Granted that great ideas were concerned with 
the movement, — the recovered faith in the direct 
access of the individual soul to God, the rights 
of scholarship and reason, the fresh impulses of 
a young but growing nationalism, — still these 
ideas were centred in the strongest personality 
of the time, and through that dauntless manhood 
were wielded with elemental energy upon the 
imagination and heart of Europe. Luther is but 
a conspicuous example of the general method of 
historical evolution. There are in our own annals 
two great names, without which we could not in 
the least understand our history, and without 
which, so far as we can see, that history itself 
could not have been what it is. But for the large 
sagacity, the exalted patriotism, the unerring 
tact, the statuesque character, and the majestic 
personality of its first President, — a personality 
that had the power to create and sustain an ever- 
widening enthusiasm for itself, — this country 
would have perished in its cradle. The same 
thing may be said with equal truth of Abraham 
Lincoln. He was the master of his generation. 


290 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

He understood the sentiment of the North and 
the logic of slavery; he measured, as no other 
mind did, the forces of hostility to the Union and 
of friendship for it; he knew when to move and 
when to arrest his steps. He was well aware 
that he was dependent for success upon the loy¬ 
alty of his fellow-citizens; he spoke the right 
word at the right time, and waited long enough, 
but never too long, for the development of patri¬ 
otic support. He set before himself the highest 
end,—the union and honor of his country; he 
had to reach that end through war and the de¬ 
feat of half the people and financial disaster to 
many parts of the country. He had for his power 
of accomplishment the forces in the national 
heart and the power of the public credit. These 
he understood, developed, and wielded as no 
other man of his time did or could. Lincoln was 
an epochal man, and he turned the stream of 
our national life in new and unexpected direc¬ 
tions. The war was fought by the power of an 
idea, — American nationalism. The greatest in¬ 
tellectual representative of that idea was Daniel 
Webster; but the greatest political advocate of 
it, the wisest and most powerful administrator 
in its behalf, was Abraham Lincoln. The ideas 
upon which the country was founded were again 
blended in a great personality, and their power 
once more became living and revolutionary. The 
lesson that lies upon the surface of our own his- 


PERSONALITY IN PHILOSOPHY. 291 


tory is the lesson of all history. Pericles in Ath¬ 
ens, Caesar in Rome, Charlemagne in Mediaeval 
Europe, Cromwell in England, Knox in Scotland, 
and Napoleon in France, all are epoch-making men 
in the history of human affairs. The contention 
is that the great idea is blended with the great 
personality, that truth and manhood work to¬ 
gether with controlling power. 

Even in the region of philosophy, where it is 
usually considered that ideas count for every¬ 
thing and personality for nothing, it is not diffi¬ 
cult to see that the most important qualification 
must be made to such a statement. The person¬ 
ality of Socrates, both in the traditions that have 
given us the image of it with an approach to the 
actual man, and in the more or less ideal presen¬ 
tations of Plato, has been the greatest philosophic 
incentive in the whole history of human specula¬ 
tion. From physics to ethics, from nature to man, 
— nature’s master,—was the courageous creed 
of the great Athenian; a creed so perfectly ex¬ 
pressed in the entire habit of the man that the 
personality rather than the philosopher has sur¬ 
vived. And, if we take for another example a 
character at the farthest remove from Socrates, 
we can still discern the force of personality in 
philosophy. Probably no thinker ever made less 
of personality than Aristotle. The subject under 
discussion, the right method in the movement 
upon it, and the attainment of the exact and cer- 


292 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

tain truth, — these seem to be his sole aim and 
interest; and it is supposed that his unsurpassed 
influence upon human thought has been due to 
the vast survey that he took of the territories of 
human knowledge, and the masses of valid and 
final thinking contained in his works. These 
merits are certainly his; but I venture the sug¬ 
gestion that the main and permanent power of 
Aristotle has been the blending of these high 
excellences with another and a higher, the extraor¬ 
dinary character of the mind revealed in his 
works. From almost any single work of this 
thinker that has come down to us, it would be 
possible to construct an image of his mind, to 
write a description of his intellect, to work out 
a psychology of the man. There is a positive 
fascination in the acuteness, the comprehensive¬ 
ness, and the fruitfulness of that thinking per¬ 
sonality, its profound and eager love of truth, its 
great sincerity, its steady and massive earnest¬ 
ness, and its majestic rational force. Again the 
personality of the philosopher becomes the organ 
of the liberating ideas, and these owe much of 
their persistence and charm to the imperial intel¬ 
lect that must ever remain in association with 
them. 

The inference from all this is plain. The 
advent of Christianity was the beginning of the 
greatest revolution in human history. The ideas 
of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 293 

of man, the conceptions of the kingdom of God 
and eternal life, the whole revelation of the char¬ 
acter of our Maker and the order for man and 
society brought into the world by Jesus Christ, 
cannot be separated from him. He is his reli¬ 
gion. He accomplished more while he was in 
the world, and he has done more since he left it, 
by the homage that his character has won from 
human hearts, than by the power of any single 
idea. Precious as the gospels are, the sympa¬ 
thetic reader is soon able to see that Christ is 
infinitely greater. They are but broken lights, 
and he is ever more than they. His power is 
seen in the manner in which he evoked the oppo¬ 
sition of his time, in the way in which he concen¬ 
trated it upon himself. It was his personal 
power that opened the infernal depths in the 
hearts of Pharisee and Saducee, in priest and 
scribe, that drew out the latent and deadly poison 
in his countrymen. “Criticism,” it has been said, 
“is a kind of homage,” and the power to madden 
the hypocrite and the knave, to gather into one 
huge black cloud the ignorance and the perver¬ 
sity of many generations, and to draw it upon 
one’s self, is an unmistakable sign of the highest 
endowment; as it is only the lofty mountain that 
can collect upon itself the impurities of wide- 
extending expanses of poisoned atmosphere, and 
open upon its own head the terrible but cleansing 
storm. 


294 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


We must think, also, of the homage that 
Christ drew upon himself, — the love that he re¬ 
ceived, the inspiration that he communicated, the 
consolation that he imparted, the heroism that 
he created in the men and women who best knew 
him. This has been the chief line of his power 
over subsequent times. Under the shadow of 
his great and gracious personality, men have 
abandoned their guilty loves, and turned toward 
righteousness with unappeasable longing. The 
fires that he has kindled have burned down the 
structures of evil habit; and forces mediated by 
the sense of his presence have brought into exist¬ 
ence the richest, the most various, and the fairest 
types of human character. In the mystic sense 
of companionship with him, millions have strug¬ 
gled to do their duty, looking to God, and not 
to man, for duty’s holy and sure reward. And 
as civilization springs out of the emotions and 
habits of the people, — as it is but the life artic¬ 
ulated that surges in a boundless sea of feeling, 
instinct, intuition, and moral custom in the popu¬ 
lar heart, — so Christ’s control of the sources of 
life in the Western world proclaims him the great¬ 
est force in the progress that this portion of our 
race has achieved. It is a fact like this that, 
entirely apart from all theological considerations, 
opens one’s eyes to the unmeasured power of the 
person of Christ, that makes one regret the poor 
use of it that one has hitherto made, that rebukes 


THE PREACHER'S IDEAL. 


295 


one’s stupidity in failing to discern the Divine 
Presence that has penetrated our whole civiliza¬ 
tion with its truth and grace. 

y. 

Psychological considerations make it plain that 
the utmost emphasis should be placed upon the 
Person of Christ. The reproduction of his life 
in the life of mankind would mean for it the 
highest conceivable worth and happiness. The 
ideal fits the soul, and lays imagination under 
the largest and holiest spell. For those who 
make it their business to institute a new mind in 
human beings, there cannot be a moment’s hesi¬ 
tation as to what mind shall be their chosen 
standard. Mind must be subdued to mind, and 
all must be brought under captivity to Christ. 
And it cannot be said too often that the trans¬ 
fusion of one mind through another is a much 
more hopeful undertaking than the enthrone¬ 
ment of abstract ideas, and their investment with 
authority over the fountains of passion and the 
sources of activity. What is the highest ambi¬ 
tion of the true preacher? Does he not believe 
that it is possible for his moral consciousness to 
reproduce itself in the hearts of his people, so 
that the better mind that is in him shall take 
possession of them? Is he not confident that a 
noble man with the gift of utterance, one who is 
true to the soul of things, and in inspired accord 


296 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

with it, and armed with its holy sympathies, and 
filled with its resistless persuasions, can put him¬ 
self into the mind of a thousand? Is not this 
the loftiest ambition that can enter the human 
breast, — not indeed to cram the hearer with a 
given order of theological opinion, to set over 
him the preacher’s system of belief, to strive to 
make him willing not only to swear allegiance 
for himself during the term of his natural life, 
but also to serve upon him a requisition that he 
shall coerce his children into the same relation, 
and to count every man an uncircumcised Philis¬ 
tine and heathen reprobate who refuses to ex¬ 
change freedom for bondage, but to reproduce 
the better mind that by the grace of God has 
taken possession of the preacher in the thought 
and life of a thousand souls? This is the power 
of all true speech. Demosthenes strives to make 
his mind that of all the patriotic Athenians of 
his day, and in a manner he succeeds. The 
same is true of Cicero, Chatham, Burke, and 
Webster. The whole beneficent movement be¬ 
gins from the domination of the inferior mind by 
the superior, of the ill-informed and weak by 
the well-informed and strong. This is the method 
of moral training in all the really exalted family 
life of which we have any record. The aim has 
been, not to tie the young mind to a given circle 
of opinions, but to reproduce in it the conscious¬ 
ness of the father or mother, as that has been 


THE PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION. 297 


secured by faith, sobered by reflection, purified 
by wisdom, and lifted into moral energy through 
its accord with the order of the world and the 
best sympathies and ideals of mankind. The 
mind of Monica was victorious over Augustine, 
and to the last Carlyle was ruled, as we have 
seen, by the original and profoundly religious 
spirit of his mother. It was the intellectual and 
moral vigor of an aunt that did most to form 
the youthful mind of Emerson. The same pro¬ 
cedure goes on in the schools and colleges of the 
land. The mental gifts of the teacher, his trained 
faculties and his high character as a man, do 
more to develop the intellect and form the spirit 
of the pupil than the largest mass of knowledge 
imparted. Truth has power; but when it is rep¬ 
resented in the masterful mind, and in a large 
way reflected in the gentlemanly feeling and 
manly character of the teacher, its power is ten¬ 
fold. In his remarkable address at the Washing¬ 
ton Centennial in New York in 1889, President 
Eliot said that Washington’s fate was wellnigh 
incomparable, because of the incessant transfu¬ 
sion of his great mind through the intellectual 
life of the children and youth and manhood of 
America. That certainly lays bare the great 
principle of true education. Ideas are not the 
greatest power of change for the better, but a 
mind full of ideal forces. 

It is here that the preaching of Christ puts 


298 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


itself in accord with the universal method of 
education. The best mind in relation to God, 
and the deepest and noblest in relation to the life 
of the soul and society, is the mind of Christ. 
Christ is not simply great thoughts, but these 
held in a solution of divine passion; he is not 
merely the truth, but the truth in terms of life. 
From the point of view of the pedagogue, the 
preaching of Christ is the only sane procedure. 
An extensive and noble literature has come into 
existence during the last quarter of a century 
upon the question as to the best method of reach¬ 
ing the mind of childhood and youth, upon the 
modes of approach that are easiest, and the forms 
of appeal that are most effectual in bringing 
under cultivation the largest extent of the human 
brain. The want of education has come to mean 
that, of the total brain capacity in a given indi¬ 
vidual, only a fractional part is in active service. 
Education is something more and deeper than 
the ability to read and write and reckon, construe 
Greek and Latin sentences, and hold in the 
memory a few of the facts of history. It is a 
question of the development of the total brain 
capacity, the awakening of latent powers, the 
bringing into active service and under the direc¬ 
tion of the will the entire intellectual possibility. 
Numberless experiments have been made, all 
going to show that comparatively few nominally 
educated persons are really so; that vast areas of 


MISTAKEN IDEAS . 


299 


the brain are inactive; that in fact they have 
never been reached by any adequate stimulus; 
that the majority of those who pass for men and 
women of accomplishment are operating the busi¬ 
ness of the world, studying the problems of so¬ 
ciety, and measuring the character of the ultimate 
realities, with but a fraction of their possible 
power. There is, it is believed, among the old 
records of the town of Boston, an order to this 
effect, that a given road be constructed as far as 
Newton, but no farther, for the reason that it 
was extremely unlikely that a highway back into 
the wilderness beyond that point would ever be 
needed! The Pilgrims and Puritans had as good 
a right to think that they had brought under cul¬ 
tivation all the available land within the bounda¬ 
ries of what is now the United States as most 
educated persons have for supposing that their 
total intellectual capacity is engaged in the con¬ 
duct of life. As the strip of land on the Atlan¬ 
tic seaboard occupied by the colonies was to the 
mighty continent beyond it, so is the brain power 
under actual development, even among educated 
persons, to the total brain capacity. It is this 
discovery that is the foundation of the new edu¬ 
cation. To-day, representative teachers are very 
much in the mood of Columbus after he had 
made his first voyage. Something rich and won¬ 
derful has been found. Those who have gone 
into the study of the child mind most deeply are 


300 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


the apostles of hope. What they have seen they 
have not fully explored, but they are sure that 
they have looked upon a new phase of the Old 
World. It is their vision of the enormous latent 
brain capacities of the child and youth, which 
are but superficially touched by the current forms 
of teaching, that makes them savage in their 
criticism. Samson did not know his strength 
until the young lion roared against him, and 
similarly these latent intellectual powers are wait¬ 
ing for the forms of appeal that shall awake and 
bring them forth. It is worth while for Presi¬ 
dent Stanley G. Hall to give himself as the apostle 
of the new education. His severe and thorough 
arraignment of methods now in use comes not 
from malice for the teacher, but from love of the 
child and youth. He sees, as few in our genera¬ 
tion see, the vast areas of brain substance that, in 
the overwhelming majority of persons, lie fallow. 
He sees men lifting the burdens of life with a 
single finger when their Maker has provided them 
a full hand, and driving the supports upon which 
they are to found their homes with a bare fist 
when they might employ a trip-hammer. 

The new education, which has certainly come 
to stay, has in this discussion a profound signifi¬ 
cance. It means for the preacher a revelation of 
the moral powers that are dependent for their 
evolution upon the development of certain areas 
of the brain. There is everything to hope for 


THE NEW EDUCATION. 


301 


in the way of the evolution of moral power and 
magnificent character, if certain sections of the 
brain can be brought into full and predominating 
activity; and there is nothing but discouragement 
before the preacher who fails to reach these cen¬ 
tres of the higher energy. God made men up¬ 
right, but they have found out many inventions. 
There are sources of power in humanity to-day 
sufficient for the moral transformation of society, 
if only the slumbering energy could be roused 
and called into active service. Those who see 
the facts stand aghast over the continued waste 
of manhood, over the stupid postponement of a 
millennium that might be indefinitely hastened 
in its coming. The men who are in this great 
study, and who at first were tempted by material¬ 
ism, have been converted by it into the profound- 
est spiritual beliefs. Nothing can properly edu¬ 
cate man, so it is held by these students, but the 
appeal of the Infinite which is revelation, — but 
the response to the Infinite which is religion. 
The highest form of revelation is, of course, the 
highest form of appeal, and the mightiest reli¬ 
gious experience is the fullest development of the 
spiritual capacity of man. All modes of educa¬ 
tional stimulus must terminate in the stimulus 
which only the Infinite can supply; and all re¬ 
sponses to the teacher’s art that stop short of the 
response to God are superficial, — the merest 
ripples on the surface of the lake measured 


302 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

against its total unbroken depth. The genuine 
preacher will not be slow to see the bearing of 
all this upon his calling. It will make him ask, 
What is the supreme revelation of the Infinite, 
what is the highest form of his appeal? His 
whole procedure will fall under condemnation 
unless he is either a perfect man or a fool. The 
blundering approaches to the mind of his people 
that he has been making, he will now see, could 
have been rewarded with no other result than 
indifference. The superficial religiousness he 
will understand as consequent upon the superfi¬ 
cial appeal, and the absence of moral power and 
influence in his church he will explain by the 
fact that the sources of spiritual energy in the 
brain and heart of his congregation have not been 
opened. Christ, and the preaching of Christ, 
will become for him once more the Divine mes¬ 
sage, and he will resolve to use this sovereign 
revelation and appeal of the Infinite in a way to 
call forth something like the total answer of the 
soul. To seek for the reproduction of Christ’s 
mind in the mind of the community is the 
greatest aim that one can cherish; to present 
him as the appeal of God to the brain substance 
and soul-force of the individual is certain to be 
honored by a mighty response. In deep respect 
for the constitution of man, in entire accord with 
the new education, and in league with the whole 
logic of living, the total endeavor of the modern 


THE MIND OF CHRIST. 


303 


pulpit should have for its motto, “Have this 
mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” 1 
In the two fundamental aspects of content and 
character, that mind is confessedly without a 
parallel. “The absence from the biography of 
Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent 
growth of human knowledge, whether in natural 
science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere 
has had to discount ” is indeed remarkable. 
“For when we consider what a large number of 
sayings are recorded of or attributed to him, it 
becomes most remarkable that in literal truth 
there is no reason why any of his words should 
ever pass away in the sense of becoming obsolete. 
Contrast Jesus Christ in this respect with other 
thinkers of like antiquity. Even Plato ... is 
nowhere in this respect compared with him. 
Head the dialogues and see how enormous is the 
contrast with the gospels in respect of errors of 
all kinds, reaching even to absurdity in respect 

1 Phil. ii. 5. The New Education has a message for the min¬ 
istry of priceless value. It discovers the law of mental and 
moral development in a wonderfully fresh and vital way; it 
gives new insights into the marvelous capacities of the human 
soul; and it begets the conviction that in original endowment 
there is not so great a difference among mankind, rather that 
the highest gifts are far more widely diffused than is commonly 
supposed; and it indicates the reality of the objects of re¬ 
ligion by showing their necessity for anything like the total 
education of man. Kevelation as the appeal of the Infinite to 
the soul, and religion as the response of the soul to the Infinite, 
acquire an august meaning in the light of this new study. 


304 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral 
sense.” 1 Supplement this impressive negative 
with the positive transcendence of the teaching 
of Jesus, and add to the divine content the char¬ 
acter of that mind, its inapproachable grace and 
power, and the aim of all inspired and inspiring 
preaching is unmistakable. 

VI. 

This discussion has now arrived at its most 
important stage. If Christ should be supreme 
in the modern pulpit, there must be a discoverable 
philosophical ground for that supremacy. A clear 
sense of the validity of that ground must have a 
profound influence upon the methods of the 
preacher, must make him conscious that in preach¬ 
ing Christ he is in accord with the deepest nature 
of things. Now the philosophical basis of the 
claim that the Master should be the final form of 
the preacher’s message is that the ultimate real¬ 
ity in the universe is the personality of God, and 
that only personality can mediate personality. 
Science deals with the universe as it falls within 
the fields of time and space. She is true to her 
calling in laying the utmost weight upon the 
system of laws according to which things within 
the sphere of sensation behave. Philosophy seeks 
for the unity of the moral world of man and 
the material world of science, in the reality 
1 Thoughts on Religion, pp. 157, 158. 


THE UNIVERSE AS PERSONAL. 305 

which, while manifested in both, lies behind 
them as their ground and cause; and theistic 
religion goes a step further, gathers the universe 
into a personal life, regards all things as in some 
sense expressions of an Infinite Will, fastens 
upon the soul of man as in the creative process 
lifted into permanent moral relations with its 
Maker, a divinely ordained communicant in the 
thought and love and life of the Father of all. 

The Christian faith is grounded in the philoso¬ 
phy that sums up the universe in the personality 
of God. And if man is allowed to interpret the 
universe at all, it does seem that the personal 
way is the inevitable way. Sure of spirit within, 
we may advance with Berkeley, and read out of 
the whole sensuous appeal the ordaining mind of 
God. Asking the reason for the sensational stim¬ 
ulus that is ever flowing in upon us, awakening 
and feeding the intellect, furnishing the mental 
bricks out of which the fair structure of know¬ 
ledge is built, and knowing that only mind can 
furnish mind, we may assume at once that what 
we misname matter is but the vital presence of 
God. Or, accepting from Mr. Spencer the decla¬ 
ration that our notion of power is born from 
within, that we could not understand the push of 
things against us were it not for the prior push 
of our life against them, we may go on to affirm 
that, since the only power that we know anything 
about is spiritual, if we are to interpret the force 


306 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

that is operating upon us in the regions of sense, 
in the contemporaneous life of the race and 
through the courses of history, if we are not to 
stand dumb in its presence, we must say that we 
are face to face with God. Or we may take the 
path of Lotze and construe the universe with the 
personality of man as our guide and interpreter. 
In the last analysis reality lies in personality, 
and the whole realm of things must be centred 
in the will and conscience of our Maker. The 
power that rolls in the sea, that shines in suns 
and stars, that stands fast in the mountain, that 
utters its grace in the flower, that breaks into 
melody in the note of the bird, and that sweeps 
round man as physical environing force, is the 
power of the Infinite Will. The might that rises 
through the instincts of the heart, that flashes in 
the intuitions of genius, that gives volume and 
richness to social life, that emerges in the insti¬ 
tutions and literatures and arts of the race, is 
again the might of the Supreme Person. The 
ultimate centre of all the force that shapes from 
within, and all the energy that stimulates from 
without, is the personal being of God. This is 
the eternal reality of the universe. What we 
call things are but the various and transient 
processions of the Infinite Personal Soul; what 
we call animal life is but the Divine differentiated 
into temporary, semi-independent existence; what 
we call man is but the primal personality uttered 


REALITY AND THOUGHT. 307 

in terms of its own highest being, the finite lifted 
into the image of the Infinite, and ordained to 
perpetual fellowship with him. If we are reli¬ 
gious men, every path of intellectual advance must 
end in the personality of God. To the religious 
mind this universe is not merely a system of laws, 
and an infinite force acting in accordance with 
them; nor is it an impersonal idea evolving its 
hidden richness into the explicitness of concrete 
existence: it is the personal life of God our 
Father in progressive expression and realization. 
If, then, the momentous truth is that the ultimate 
reality of all things lies in the personality of 
God, it must follow that only personality can 
mediate personality, and the higher the person¬ 
ality in time, the more adequate will be the medi¬ 
ation of the personality that is above time. 

Ideas are mighty because they are aspects of 
the living truth, because they serve in their way 
to conduct the mind to the recognition of the 
vital fact. Ideas would be sufficient if the uni¬ 
verse were founded upon ideas and not upon the 
living God; or if man were a being of merely 
intellectual or contemplative powers, and not a 
nature endued with profound sympathies, and 
one that can rest neither in thought nor in feel¬ 
ing, but in the self-perfection that comes through 
achievement. Ideas are the image of reality at 
‘rest; thought and being are one and the same 
only when thought is at its highest, and only 


308 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

when being is motionless. It is utterly beyond 
the power of intellect to represent or conceive 
life. Between the picture of Niagara and Ni¬ 
agara itself there is an infinite distance. We 
need not disparage the picture; we need not dwell 
upon its inadequacies; we may hang it in our 
homes, and by its aid stand, whenever we will, 
by the side of the thundering cataract. At the 
same time, we must never overlook the fact that 
the best picture can furnish nothing more than 
the most distant approach to the reality. How 
can that which is forever at rest represent that 
which is forever in motion? How can the life¬ 
less and stationary thing image the boiling and 
storming abyss? There is the same contradiction 
between thought and reality, if we suppose that 
thought gives us reality in its living majesty. 
The features of the cataract that are in eternal 
repetition are given in the picture; but the end¬ 
less magnificent change, the actual torrent and 
plunge, and all the sublime accompaniments in 
color and sound, cannot be transferred to plate or 
canvas. It is the same with ideas and the high¬ 
est life of the universe. They are wonderful, 
but the momentum and thunder of being is not 
in them. They are indispensable, but they are 
not the highest, and they can never be the final 
mediation of God. Here one sees the folly of 
substituting a system of theology, Trinitarian or* 
Unitarian, for the Personal Life of the universe. 


THE GIFT OF ABSTRACTION. 


309 


It is giving the mother, not her child, hut some 
distorted picture of it; it is spreading the table, 
not with apples of Eden, but with the poor images 
of them. What men want to know is the active, 
enlightening, rewarding reality of things. 

I would not be understood as doing other than 
honor to the magnificent gift by which man 
reaches general news of the world, by which he 
forms notions, puts the fullness of space and time 
into the categories of the understanding, and lays 
intellectual hold upon reality; nor would I con¬ 
sent to be placed among those who see nothing 
but vanity in the effort to compass the complete 
organization of thought. For all that, in its own 
place, I cherish the profoundest respect. My 
contention is, that reflective thought cannot pierce 
to the secret of existence; that we need another 
guide if we would look upon the face of God; 
that we must seek another mediator if we would 
behold with the eye of the spirit, and feel in the 
centres of our being, the reality of the Eternal 
Love. Man is a moral being, one created to be 
a doer of the will of God, and not a hearer only; 
and it is only as thought and sympathy serve as 
the wings of the achieving spirit that they bring 
us close to the secret of the universe. The boat 
upon the river and the intellect upon the great 
current of a strenuous moral life both come 
home. 

Metaphysicians tell us that when we have taken 


310 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


our common notions of cause and substance and 
relation, when we have analyzed the compound 
of experience and reached the pure conceptions of 
the understanding, the moulds into which all 
knowable existence must be run, we have touched 
the permanent form of reality. The human mind 
and the world, when they have looked at each 
other long enough, answer to each other as face 
answers to face in water. Take from the Infinite 
reality this show under which it appears in time 
and space, pierce backward to the Eternal under 
this phenomenal pageant, and then our concep¬ 
tions at their best answer to, are but the thought- 
side of, the ultimate and everlasting truth. This 
style of thinking I consider valid; only I would 
insist in coming to the highest of all the catego¬ 
ries, the form of the personal soul. Only at this 
point can we reach the junction, the inseparable 
union of thought and being. Cause and sub¬ 
stance, relation and reality, are but the logical 
forms under which the ego is conceived, used as 
moulds into which the world melting into sensa¬ 
tion is to be run; the ego itself being at once the 
supreme logical form and the supreme reality, 
the fruitful source of the whole scheme of notions, 
and the concentration of all the attributes which 
these notions connote or represent. Thus the 
whole scheme of logical forms runs up into that 
of the personal soul, and the supreme logical 
form, I repeat, is but the reflection of the su- 


PHILOSOPHY , POETRY, AND MORALITY. 311 

preme personal reality. Logic lands us in per¬ 
sonality as its crown, and we pass from the crown 
to the living head by which it is worn. Person¬ 
ality, as the ultimate form of the logical judgment 
and the highest form of reality, stands out clear 
and mighty, begins to construe the world for 
itself, and in its construction to justify philoso¬ 
phy and poetry and morality. Philosophy finds 
the ultimate meaning of the universe under the 
notion of the ego; poetry looks through the 
worlds of time and space as through a sublime 
symbol to the eternal beauty; morality, as the 
victorious struggle of the personal soul after 
righteousness, discovers God through life. We 
need philosophy with its notion, and poetry with 
its symbol, and morality with its life. These 
three great expressions of the human spirit must 
ever remain, but the greatest of the three is the 
vital and victorious moral movement. 

Here is the attraction of the living world to 
men of genius. It is a piece of reality, and not 
a logical table with mystic correspondences; and 
the deep and sympathetic study of it leads through 
life to the Eternal Life. We cannot blame a 
Shakespeare, a Goethe, or a Tennyson for the 
passion after the concrete that consumed them. 
Through reality, under local and mutable forms, 
they were beholding reality Universal and Immu¬ 
table. The philosopher at his best is certainly 
a king among men: but then he is so very seldom 


312 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


at his best; he is so very apt to conclude that the 
only path to the truth is that order of concep¬ 
tions, that table of notions, that scheme of cate¬ 
gories, over which he has toiled so laboriously; 
he is apt to place thought above life, and count 
an idea a better mediator of the Eternal than a 
man. The best complement to the mind of the 
philosopher is the mind of the child. The world 
interests the child because it is a living world, and 
that interest is the mark, not of childhood alone, 
but of humanity. Life comes, not as a vast scien¬ 
tific generalization, but as a superbly beautiful 
reality, springing out of the ground in grass and 
flower, moving upon the earth in a thousand 
forms of strength and grace, breaking upon the 
ear in all harmonious sounds, filling the eye with 
the poetry of motion, as in the flight of the bird, 
distributing and at the same time gathering it¬ 
self into permanent centres of power in loving 
men and women. The world is alive, and its life 
is rich and capable of enriching our human ex¬ 
istence. Science with her generalizations must 
make the domain of sense more richly real, and 
fill it with fresh charm for the eyes and ears 
and sympathies of men. Similarly, the domain 
of religious history, the realm of Christian fact, 
must be handled in the way that will keep all its 
freshness and humanness. The world wants ideas, 
but not in the abstract and disembodied state. 
It wants them in combination with the chemical, 


LIFE LEADS TO LIFE. 


313 

the physical, the astronomical, and the biological 
facts which they explain; it wants them as they 
show their might in just and courageous deeds, 
as they shine in the forms of love, as they storm 
in the indignation of the reformer, as they utter 
their fullness in the richness and promise of 
human lives under the discipline of God. When 
upon the imagination of the Greek sculptor the 
ideal Parthenon dawned, he found no rest until 
the actual Parthenon crowned the city’s heights; 
and to this day the recovery of the Greek’s vision 
of beauty is inevitably followed by attempts at 
the restoration of its incomparable form. As, in 
the case of art, idea and form go together, so it 
is in the realm of the religious life. As it is the 
real soul that finds the real world, so it is the 
living human personality that reveals the living 
God. 

The inference at this point must be already 
obvious. If life can alone lead to life, if person¬ 
ality can alone reveal personality, the place of 
Christ in the modern pulpit is plain. Only the 
supreme person in time can give us the supreme 
Person above time. We reach the living God 
only as we find him mediated by the sons of God, 
and the leader of all the sons of God must take 
his place at the heart of our faith and at the 
centre of our educational and religious endeavor. 

Another aspect of the general philosophical 
vindication for the ascendency of Christ in the 


814 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 


modern pulpit is the familiar fact that all the 
moral and spiritual truth in the world has been 
born into it through the struggles of the human 
soul. I have referred to the fact that reality lies 
in personality, that truth is life, that this uni¬ 
verse is centred in an Infinite Person, and that 
only as mediated by persons can we experience 
the fullness of his wisdom and pity. I now call 
attention to the human side of the subject, and 
remark that the ideal forces in which preach¬ 
ers deal from Sunday to Sunday represent the 
effort, the sorrow, and the victory of humanity. 
We often hear about the history of ideas, but 
for the most part such histories are colorless and 
lifeless things. Think of the labor, the sus¬ 
pense, and the pain represented in the accepted 
scientific truth of the world. To make an ab¬ 
stract scheme of it is to detach it from the intel¬ 
lectual travail of the race, and to empty it of its 
charm, incentive, and grandeur. For the pur¬ 
poses of thought and practical life, the abstrac¬ 
tion must be made; but we should come back as 
soon as possible to the splendid totality, the asso¬ 
ciation of scientific truth with scientific men. 
The cost in toil, in pain, in blood, of the contri¬ 
butions to science made by such men as Coper¬ 
nicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, and Darwin it 
would be difficult to overestimate; and the mighty 
results are thanklessly accepted unless at times 
we think of their human value. Even in the 


IDEAL HISTORY. 


315 


case of those truths that are remotest from the 
higher life of man, the human element is vast 
and priceless; and an ideal history of science 
would be a record, not merely of discovery, but 
of long-suffering and victorious manhood. The 
effort and the hardship of men of science are 
often quite as great as those of famous travelers 
and discoverers. The romance that surrounds 
the achievements of men like Columbus, Captain 
Cook, Livingstone, and Stanley should invest the 
whole circle of accepted scientific truth. The 
eager, fevered pulse of humanity is in it all. 
The beat of the surging sea of laborious and vic¬ 
torious intellect is heard through it all. 

How much more force there is in this conten¬ 
tion when applied to moral and spiritual truth 
will be obvious upon the slightest consideration. 
Back of the Republic of Plato, the Ethics of 
Aristotle, the De Officiis of Cicero, and the moral 
discussions of the Stoics, there lie two mighty 
civilizations. Each of these books is a symbol 
of the splendid struggle and achievement of men, 
a glass through which we can look into the seeth¬ 
ing soul of our race, an eminence from which we 
can behold the battle with evil extending over a 
thousand generations. It is genius that inter¬ 
prets, that constructs maxims, that forms codes 
of law, that makes decalogues; but it is humanity 
that lives. The amount of suffering lying back 
of the perception of the principle upon which the 


316 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY . 


story of the choice of Hercules is based is incalcu¬ 
lable. Think of the dismal life of delusion pro¬ 
longed through a thousand years before the first 
intuition came that self-denial was sometimes a 
good; think of the further suffering endured before 
the intuition became a commonplace of morality; 
and think again of the struggle and tears necessary 
to keep it a commonplace in the higher thought 
of men! Behind that beautiful imagination of 
Orpheus sailing past the Siren’s isle in disdain, 
because he was himself a musician and was able 
to drown the seductive strain in a flood of diviner 
melody, there lie the sorrow and the aspiration 
of uncounted millions. The richness of life rep¬ 
resented in it, the defeat of evil under the shadow 
of the good, the fine ideal of human character 
that it holds forth, have back of them the deepest, 
saddest, and noblest of all histories. If we ascend 
from the ethical to the spiritual, the fact is even 
more obvious. We have our Christian monothe¬ 
ism holding its way clear of superstition over 
the devout modern mind. Think of the homage 
to stock and stone, the Moloch-worship, the poly¬ 
theism, the soul-annihilating pantheisms, the per¬ 
plexity, the self-immolation, and the despair that 
led the way to this vast and beneficent faith! As 
the cloud settled upon Sinai when God appeared 
to his servant, so upon the whole upward move¬ 
ment of humanity because of the Divine Presence 
in it there has rested an immemorial sorrow. To 


THE BIBLE AND EXPEDIENCE. 317 

read out of the sacred books of China the golden 
rule even in its negative form, or to study the 
fragments of exalted truth in the religious litera¬ 
ture of India, without a pathetic sense of the 
silent centuries of suffering represented in these 
achievements, is stupid and brutish in the last 
degree. 

When in the course of this revelation of God 
through humanity we come to the main stream, 
the discovery of God made through the Hebrew 
race, we still find that the light breaks in through 
the struggle of the human heart. The great pro¬ 
phet of the exile, speaking of his people, says, 
“Thy God is thy glory,” and, we may add, “thy 
sorrow.” Who can tell what psychical labor 
preceded the conception of Jehovah reached by 
Moses, and the enlargement and elevation of that 
conception in the mind of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, 
and the later psalmists! The literature created 
by these men is a monument to the method of 
God in his self-disclosure to men. It is through 
the silence of banishment, the vision that over¬ 
whelms the heart with awe and fear, the duty 
that makes the soul stagger with its weight, the 
suffering that drinks up the life of the spirit, the 
struggles that issue in triumph only as the 
strength seems almost gone. To employ the ideas 
of the Hebrew race without a constant reference 
to the souls of the Hebrew prophets is to keep 
ourselves and our people out of the divine trag- 


318 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

edy of life. The same is true of the New Testa¬ 
ment. The ideas that Paul brings are borne in 
upon a sea of fire. The tides of his own life — 
toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing — float them to our 
door. What is the meaning of Gethsemane but 
as a picture of the cost of righteousness? what 
is the significance of Calvary but as an eternal 
reminder that the nature of God as love is real¬ 
ized only through the love that stands ready to 
suffer unto death? The whole method of ethical 
achievement and spiritual manifestation has its 
symbol in the first Israelite’s wrestle with God. 
Through the long night the struggle goes on, and, 
although man prevails with God, the morning 
finds him bruised and lame, and he bears upon 
his life to its close the marks of the Lord. To 
enthrone Christ in the pulpit is to associate moral 
and religious truth with the august personalism 
through which it has come into the world. 

I have tried in this chapter to assign reasons 
for my claim that the mission of the preacher of 
to-day is to preach Christ. I have referred to 
the wholesome intellectual habit of the time, the 
association of great ideas with their original his¬ 
toric expression; I have dwelt upon the fact that 
the evolution of mankind can be accounted for 
only through the ascendency of kingly men; I 
have called attention to the further fact that the 
true method of education works through the dom¬ 
ination of the inferior mind by the superior; 


SUMMARY. 


319 


finally, I have contended that, since the centre of 
the universe is the Personal God, only soul can 
mediate soul. And these four contentions all point 
to the one great conclusion: Christianity and 
Christ must be in inseparable association, both 
in the cast of our thought and in the form of our 
teaching; the source of the whole progress of our 
Western world in the things of the spirit can 
be found only in Christ; the hope of the world 
lies in the promise of the complete captivity of 
the mind of mankind to the mind of Christ; 
and, once more, the sole sufficient mediator of 
the Infinite Personal Love is the grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

The introduction of God to the human mind, 
the exposure of man to the Infinite goodness, — 
that is the great business of all preaching. Ideas 
are our approaches, our instruments; but person¬ 
ality full of ideal forces is our power. The ulti¬ 
mate Personality must be the ultimate and resist¬ 
less power. The force that is to change feeling, 
set higher standards in the conscience, recon¬ 
struct character, remove moral infirmity, wipe 
out the shame of existence, and inform life with 
a boundless significance and hope, must be the 
force of the Eternal Spirit working upon the 
human. To lift the mind to the height of this 
idea of the universe as gathered into one Abso¬ 
lute Person, to habituate the understanding to 
this momentous truth, to make it aware that the 


320 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

presence that perpetually overshadows it is the 
presence of the Infinite, to open the gates of life 
that the King of glory may enter, is the only sure 
way to make fast the soul to righteousness, to 
hasten its growth in all noble powers, to put it 
where the ultimate educational might of the world 
can evermore play upon it. Here is the sorrowful 
thing about agnosticism and atheism. They are 
terrible mistakes and at the same time they are 
self-imposed calamities. No serious man would 
go that way were he not thrown into despair. 
Perhaps single individuals and society at large 
need, owing to the general and brutish wicked¬ 
ness, the discipline of agnosticism and atheism. 
None the less must we deplore the mood as the 
greatest of all calamities. There is an education 
that comes to the soul from vital faith in God, 
and a power for good upon society that abstract 
right cannot give, that an atheistic or agnostic 
morality set upon the very pinnacle of altruism 
is utterly unable to supply. The lives that kindle 
the transforming aspirations and hopes of man¬ 
kind are those upon whom the fire of heaven has 
descended; and the characters that are the fra¬ 
grance of history have been perfumed at the altar 
of the Most High. I can think of nothing so 
calamitous as human life organized upon the 
atheistic, or, what is the same thing, upon the 
commercial idea, and the consequent loss of all 
the exalting and sweetening power that comes in 


THE SUPBEME GOOD . 


321 


upon society through faith in the Maker, and 
Judge, and Father of mankind. It is forever 
true that God does not abandon man when man 
abandons God; but a race under the delusion of 
practical atheism, with the living God unrecog¬ 
nized and standing outside the circle of its inter¬ 
ests, a humanity under the horrible dream that it 
has no Father in heaven, can never be a conquer¬ 
ing humanity. On the other hand, I can im¬ 
agine nothing better or sublimer for man than 
profound and vital surrender to the Personality 
that rules all worlds, than the education that 
comes through the habitual sense of God, than 
the impulse toward social good, and the desire 
and power to bless other lives, that must issue 
where the spirit stands in the clear and reverent 
consciousness of the Infinite truth and grace. 
The moral personality of God is the resource of 
our race in its sin, and ignorance, and weakness, 
and sorrow; when it looks toward that it begins 
to hope, when it builds upon that it begins to 
achieve and live. The question of all questions, 
I repeat, must ever concern the larger introduc¬ 
tion of God to mankind, the resting and renew¬ 
ing of mankind in the love of the Eternal. 
Philosophy and history come to our aid here. 
Philosophy proves that the moral power of God 
can be mediated only through the living person¬ 
ality of man, and history declares that the per¬ 
sonality of the Divine Man is the sovereign and 


322 CHRIST IN THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. 

indispensable manifestation of God to the world. 
If the modern pulpit wishes to bring men to 
God, it must first of all bring them to Christ; 
for the widest outlook over the records of human¬ 
ity’s long and sad struggle, and the deepest in¬ 
sight, join in support of the assertion that there 
is none other name given among men under 
heaven whereby the educational power of the 
Infinite is brought, in boundless measure and 
resistless form, to bear upon the whole human 
character. On the holy hill of Zion the wor¬ 
shiper under the ancient faith found Jehovah; 
in the sacred elevation of the personality of 
Christ the worshiper to-day finds his Father in 
heaven; and upon this mountain of the Lord the 
modern pulpit, if it is to retain its power over 
the hearts of men, must forever stand. True 
historical insight must ever bow before Christ; 
genuine philosophic talent will always acknow¬ 
ledge the Eternal in him; and, above all, preach¬ 
ing genius, wherever it is found, on to the end 
of time, will live and rejoice in the Lord. Since 
his advent, there has never been a really great 
preacher who did not build upon him; and the 
preachers of the future who will move mightily 
upon the conscience and aspiration of men will 
move upon them in the forms of his everlasting 
power. 






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